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CLASSES  FOR  GIFTED 
CHILDREN 

An  Experimental  Study  of  Methods  of  Selection  and  Instruction 

By 

GUY  MONTROSE  WHIPPLE,  Ph.  D. 

Professor  of  Applied  Psychology,  Carnegie  Institute  of  Technology 
(Formerly  Professor  of  Education,  University  of  Illinois) 

With  the  Cooperation  of  Dr.  T.  S.  Henry,  Dr.   H.   T" 
Manuel  and  Miss  Genevieve  Coy 


Fir  t  Printing,  1200  Copies 
1919 


Public  School  Publishing  Company, 
Bloomington,  Illinois 

37*73 


copyright  1919  by 
Public  School  Publishing  Company 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS  , 

£'  Page 

Introduction :   The  Problem 5 

Chapter  • 

I.     The  Organization  of  the  Special  Classes 9 

Selection  of  the  Pupils 10 

The  Control  Classes 11 

Personal  Data  of  the  Selected  Pupils 11 

II.     Classification  of  the  Mental  and  Educational  Tests...  13 

III.  The  Mental  Tests  and  Their  Outcomes 19 

A.  Individual  Tests  19 

1.  The  Binet-Simon  Test 19 

2.  The  Pour  Form-Boards 22 

3.  Picture-Arrangement  Test  22 

4.  Healy-Pintner  Picture  Completion  Test . .  22 

5.  Painted  Cube  Construction  Test 23 

6.  The  Porteus  Maze  Tests 23 

7.  Pyle  Marble-Sorting  Test 23 

8.  Easy  Directions  and  Hard  Directions  Tests  24 

9.  Easy  and  Hard  Opposites  Tests 25 

10.  The  Analogies  Test 25 

B.  Group  Tests 26 

11.  Cancellation    26 

12.  Memory  ('Lincoln'  and  'Marble  Statue')  27 

13.  Memory   ('Dutch  Homestead') 28 

14.  Manuel  Perceptual  Learning  Test 29 

15.  Letter  Substitution  Test  (Thurstone) 29 

16.  Digit-Symbol  Substitution  Test 30 

17.  Character-Traits  Directions  Test 31 

18.  Word  Building,  I  and  II    (Whipple) 32 

19.  Terman  and  Childs  Completion  Test 32 

20.  Terman  Completion  Test 33 

21.  Trabue  Language  Scales,  B  and  C 33 

22.  Trabue  Language  Scales,  J  and  K 34 

23.  Completion  of  Number  Series  (Thurstone)  34 

24.  Completion  of  Number  Series  (Coy) 35 

25.  Original  Analogies    36 

26.  Equivalent  Proverb 37 

27.  Reasoning  Tests,  IV,  V  and  VI  (B'onser)  .  38 

28.  Inference  Test  (Thurstone) 39 

29.  Reasoning   Test   (Thurstone) 40 

30.  Hand   Test    (Thurstone) 40 

31.  Spatial  Relations  Test  A   (Thurstone) ...  41 

32.  Punched  Holes  Test  (Thurstone) 41 

33.  Flag  Test   (Thurstone) 42 

34.  Steacy  Drawing  Construction  Test,  1-40 .  .  44 

35.  Steacy  Drawing  Construction  Test,  41-100.  45 

IV.  The  Educational  Tests  and  their  Outcomes 47 

36.  Buckingham  Spelling  Test 48 

37.  Ayres  Spelling  Test 48 

38.  Handwriting 48 

39.  Drawing  a  Church  and  a  Snowball  Fight .  .  49 

40.  Drawing  a  Horse 49 

41.  Drawing  a  Toy  Wagon 50 


42.  Esthetic  Appreciation  Test 51 

43.  Constant   Increment  Test 52 

44.  Error-Checking  Test  (Thurstone) 52 

45.  Practice  Test  in   Multiplication 53 

46.  Courtis  Arithmetic  Tests  Series  A  and  B.  54 
"  47.     Woody  Arithmetic  Tests  Series  A 56 

48.  Woody-McCall  Mixed  Fundamentals 57 

49.  Eeasoning  Tests,  I  and  II  (Bonser) 58 

50.  Thorndike  Beading  Scale  A 59 

51.  N.  Y.  Ventilation  Commission  Vocabulary  60 

52.  Thorndike  Beading  Scale  Alpha 60 

53.  Thorndike  Scale  Alpha  2,  Part  II 61 

54.  Punctuation  Test    62 

55.  Winch  Composition  Test 63 

V.     Individual  Differences  in  Mentality  in  Special  Group. .   65 

A.  Summarizing  for  Each  Pupil  the  Test  Outcomes  69 

1.  The  Pupil 's  Becord  Card 69 

2.  The  Percentile  Tables 69 

3.  Classification  of  the  Tests 70 

4.  'Ability  Profiles' 70 

5.  Beport  for  Parents  and  Teachers 73 

B.  The  Ambitions  and  Ideals  of  Individual  Pupils  76 

C.  Individual  Differences  in  Non-Intellectual  Traits  78 
VI.     Belation  of  the  Test  Besults  of  Pupils  in  the  Special 

Group  to  other  Indexes  of  Intelligence. .   80 

A.  The  Median  Test  Percentile 80 

B.  The  Teacher's  Estimates  of  Intelligence 81 

C.  Correlations  of  Various  Criteria  of  Intelligence.   82 

D.  Belation  of  Test  Besults  to  School  Achievement.   83 
VII.     Individual  Differences  in  Mentality  in  Control  Group.  .   94 

A.  '  Gifted '  Children  in  the  Control  Group 94 

B.  'Average'  and  'Dull'  Children  in  Control  Group  97 
VIII.     Choice  of  Tests  for  Selecting  Gifted  Pupils 100 

A.  Methods  of  Making  the  Choice 100 

B.  Becommended  Brogram  of  Tests 106 

C.  An  Illustrative  Case 107 

IX.     Choice  of  Tests  for  Differentiating  Abilities  Within  a 

Group  of  Gifted  Pupils 110 

X.     The  Adaptation  of  Teaching  Methods  to  Gifted  Children  113 

A.  Becommendations,  Pertinent  to  any  Classroom.  .115 

B.  Becommendations     Pertaining     Specifically     to 

Classrooms  for  Gifted  Children 118 

XL     An  Analytical  Study  of  Talent  in  Drawing 126 

A.  General  Plan  126 

B.  Previous    Studies    127 

C.  The  Tests  Employed 127 

D.  Summary  of  Experimental  and  Personal  Data.  .133 

E.  Inferences  Concerning  the  Psychophysical  Char- 

acteristics of  Talented  in  Drawing 135 

F.  Desirable  Program  for  Testing  Drawing  Ability.  139 

G.  Annotated  Bibliography  of  Beferences  Consulted 

in  this  Study  of  Talent  in  Drawing 142 

XII.     Partial  Bibliography  on  Gi  fted  Children  and  Education .  148 


INTRODUCTION 
The  Problem 

The  rise  of  every  system  of  universal  public  educa- 
tion has  compelled  the  development  of  a  system  of  grad- 
ing and  grouping  whereby  relatively  large  numbers  of 
children  of  approximately  the  same  pedagogical  status 
may  be  handled  in  a  single  class:  some  such  arrange- 
ment would  appear  to  be  inevitable  if  economy  of  time 
and  money  is  to  be  secured.  No  one  conversant  with  the 
situation,  however,  will  contend  that  the  pupils  of  a  given 
grade  in  our  ordinary  public-school  classes  are,  ipso 
facto,  alike  or  even  very  similar  to  one  another  in  range 
of  information,  in  susceptibility  to  training,  in  general 
intelligence.  On  the  contrary,  every  one  will  admit  that 
a  considerable  inequality  exists  in  these  respects,  so  that, 
while  we  gain  by  our  system  of  grade  grouping  in  one 
way,  we  lose  by  the  same  system  in  another  way.  Evi- 
dently, if  a  given  system  were  large  enough  so  that  it 
would  be  possible,  let  us  say,  to  subdivide  the  pupils  of 
the  fourth  grade  into  ten  classes,  we  might  gain  the 
advantages  of  grouping  and  also  gain  the  advantages  of 
homogeneity  within  the  groups  by  sorting  the  pupils  into 
ten  groups  in  such  a  way  that  each  group  should  com- 
prise pupils  of  closely  similar  ability. 

Now,  it  is  clear  that  the  greater  the  diversity  of  ca- 
pacity within  a  given  group,  the  less  readily  may  instruc- 
tion and  training  proceed,  for  a  pace  can  not  be  found 
that  will  prove  at  once  suitable  for  the  dull,  the  average 
and  the  bright  pupil.  The  fact  that  the  dull  child  in  espe- 
cial fails  to  profit  by  instruction  adjusted  to  the  mental 
pace  of  the  average  has  been  obvious  to  all  observers  and 


6  Introduction 

for  that  reason  the  idea  that  special  classes  ought  to  be 
formed  for  the  instruction  of  extra-dull  pupils  has  been 
received  with  almost  no  opposition.  Experience  in  many 
cities  has  shown  the  value  of  the  idea,  and  it  has  turned 
out  that  the  advantages  have  accrued  almost  as  much  to 
the  pupils  of  the  regular  as  to  those  of  the  special  class- 
es. The  evolution  of  this  principle  has  given  rise  to  an 
extensive  literature  and  to  a  fairly  well-developed  peda- 
gogy of  the  subnormal  child:  into  details  it  is  unneces- 
sary to  go. 

Our  problem  concerns  the  children  at  the  other  end 
of  the  intellectual  scale.  Is  it  not  probable  that  bright 
children  as  well  as  dull  children  fail  to  profit  to  the 
utmost  from  instruction  and  training  adjusted  to  the 
mental  pace  of  the  average?  Will  not  the  segregation 
of  bright  children  into  special  classes  be  as  profitable  as 
the  segregation  of  dull  children  proved  to  be  ?  Granted 
an  affirmative  answer,  there  must  be  raised  numerous 
more  specific  questions:  At  what  grade  ought  such  a 
selection  to  be  made?  By  what  method  ought  pupils  to 
be  selected  for  the  special  class?  How  many  ought  to 
be  placed  in  a  given  class?  Does  the  teacher  need  spe- 
cial qualifications?  Ought  the  course  of  study  to  con- 
tinue the  same?  Or  ought  it  to  be  enlarged  by  supple- 
mentary work?  Or  ought  the  course  of  study  to  be 
abolished  entirely?  Ought  the  pupils  to  do  more  or  to 
do  less  home  work  ?  Ought  the  methods  of  instruction — 
the  use  of  illustration,  of  induction,  of  practise  drills — 
to  be  altered?  Ought  the  pupils  to  be  encouraged  to 
participate  more  actively  in  class  discussions  or  ought 
these  tendencies  to  be  repressed  in  favor  of  rigorous  drill 
and  the  development  of  a  high  degree  of  precision  and 
speed?     What  should  be  done  to  detect  and  to  foster 


Introduction  7 

specialized  ability,  such  as  talent  in  drawing,  music,  de- 
sign, dramatic  expression,  mechanical  pursuits,  inven- 
tion and  the  like1? 

Every  one  of  these  questions  would  well  repay  care- 
ful investigation,  but  the  one  obvious  point  of  attack  at 
the  outset  is  method  of  selection,  for  unless  pupils  can 
be  rightly  selected,  it  is  of  little  use  to  study  their  re- 
action to  methods  of  instruction  in  a  special  class,  how- 
ever wisely  the  class  might  be  managed.  My  own  at- 
tempts to  study  this  matter  of  selection  were  frustrated 
by  various  circumstances  until  in  the  late  summer  of 
1917  the  General  Education  Board,  after  several  confer- 
ences between  myself  and  its  representative,  Dr.  Flexner, 
appropriated  a  sum  of  money  to  be  expended  by  me 
during  the  ensuing  academic  year  at  Urbana,  Illinois,  in 
the  investigation  of  the.  general  problem  of  the  education 
of  the  gifted  child,  with  the  understanding  that  effort 
should  be  directed  primarily  toward  answering  the  ques- 
tion: wliat  mental  tests  are  most  valuable  in  selecting 
from  ordinary  public-school  classes  bright  pupils  for 
training  in  special  classes  for  gifted  children?  This 
problem  was  the  primary  object  of  the  labors  of  Miss 
Genevieve  Coy,  who  served  as  my  private  research  as- 
sistant from  September,  1916,  to  September,  1917,  and 
without  whose  expert  and  industrious  services  this  ac- 
count could  not  have  been  written.  I  have  presented 
here  a  condensed  account  of  the  results  of  her  investiga- 
tion ;  some  of  the  more  detailed  results  may,  I  hope,  be 
published  elsewhere.    » 

In  a  similar  manner  I  have  presented  here  the  sub- 
stance of  the  investigations  conducted  by  Dr.  T.  S.  Henry 
and  Dr.  H.  T.  Manuel,  both  of  which  may  perhaps  be 
published  elsewhere  in  detailed  form.     Dr.  Henry,  in 


8  Introduction 

the  preparation  of  his  doctorate  thesis  at  the  University 
of  Illinois,  gave  attention  to  the  classroom  work  of  the 
class  of  selected  children  and  aimed  to  discover  what 
changes  in  methods  of  instruction  and  in  organization 
of  subject  matter  would  be  advantageous  for  these  chil- 
dren. Dr.  Manuel,  in  his  thesis  work,  gave  attention  to 
the  study  of  specialized  ability  in  drawing. 

All  these  investigations  were  greatly  facilitated  by 
the  cooperation  of  the  Board  of  Education  of  Urbana 
and  of  the  Superintendent  of  Schools,  Mr.  A.  P.  Johnson. 
A  plan  was  devised  whereby  a  portion  of  the  appropri- 
ation of  the  General  Education  Board  was  expended  in 
part-payment  of  the  services  of  the  teacher  to  whom  was 
assigned  charge  of  the  class  of  selected  pupils.  The 
Board  of  Education  supplied  the  necessary  room  and 
equipment  in  the  Leal  elementary  school  and  paid  the 
remainder  of  the  teacher's  salary.  This  plan  created  a 
sort  of  experimental  room  in  which  I  was  permitted  to 
work  with  reasonable  freedom  in  the  matter  of  trying 
various  mental  tests  upon  the  pupils,  while  the  final 
jurisdiction  in  matters  of  school  organization  remained 
with  the  Urbana  school  authorities.  I  wa3  also  permit- 
ted to  do  a  considerable  amount  of  check  testing  in  other 
rooms  of  the  Leal  School  and  thus  to  obtain  control  data 
of  quite  vital  importance  to  our  interpretations. 


Chapter  I 
THE  ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  SPECIAL  CLASSES 

The  Leal  School  in  which  the  Special  Room  was  loca- 
ted is  the  largest  elementary  school  in  the  city  of  Urbana. 
It  enrolls  some  400  pupils  in  12  rooms  limited  to  the  first 
six  grades.  The  teaching  force  consists  of  eleven  teach- 
ers and  a  principal,  practically  all  of  whose  time,  how- 
ever, is  spent  in  teaching.  The  district  served  by  the 
school  is  a  rather  large  one  and  includes  most  of  the 
University  residence  district,  as  well  as  a  representative 
portion  of  the  residence  district  of  the  city  itself. 

The  Room  and  the  Building.  The  physical  condition 
of  the  room  was  not  better  than  the  average.  It  was 
furnished  with  the  ordinary  school  desks,  had  no  more 
furniture  nor  pictures  than  the  other  rooms  in  the  build- 
ing and  was  no  better  equipped  than  were  they  with 
books,  maps,  globes,  or  similar  apparatus.  The  only 
changes  made  in  the  room  were  to  remove  completely  the 
Venetian  blinds  at  the  north  and  west  windows,  to  re- 
paint the  walls  and  ceilings  in  light  buff  in  place  of  the 
dingy  tones  that  had  prevailed,  and  to  resurface  the 
blackboards  in  order  to  remove  the  gloss.  The  building 
is  not  modern  in  type  and  can  not  be  said  to  be  above  the 
average  of  school  buildings  in  towns  of  this  size. 

The  Teacher.  The  teacher  in  charge  of  the  room  was 
chosen  by  the  city  superintendent.  It  was  her  first  year 
in  the  Urbana  school  system.  Her  school  preparation 
was  above  that  of  the  average  grade  teacher,  for  she  was 
a  graduate  of  one  of  the  best  normal  schools  in  one  of 
our  western  states  and  also  a  graduate  of  the  State  Uni- 
versity there.    Her  previous  teaching  experience  includ- 


10  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

ed  practice  teaching  at  the  normal  school  and  three 
years  of  experience  in  teaching  in  the  middle  and  upper 
elementary  grades.  She  must  be  ranked  high  in  aca- 
demic preparation,  in  sincerity,  and  in  integrity  of  pur- 
pose but  low  in  resourcefulness  and  initiative.  Her  work 
with  the  children  in  the  special  room  was  observed  and 
her  efficiency  rated  by  three  well-known  schoolmen,  and 
all  agreed  in  rating  her  as  "average"  or  "slightly  above 
average."  In  our  own  opinion,  her  lack  of  animation 
and  enthusiasm  was  sufficient  more  than  to  counterbal- 
ance her  superior  training  and  academic  preparation, 
and  on  this  account  we  believe  that  with  respect  to  the 
teacher  the  conditions  in  this  room  were,  again,  just 
about  average.  The  only  really  distinctive  factor  in  our 
experiment,  then,  consisted  in  the  superior  intelligence 
of  the  children  who  made  up  the  enrollment  of  the  room. 
Selection  of  the  Pupils.  It  had  been  expected  that  the 
pupils  for  the  special  room  would  be  selected  by  myself 
on  the  basis  of  mental  ability,  but  actually  the  selection 
was  made  by  the  principal  of  the  school  in  consultation 
with  the  teachers,  and  primarily  upon  the  basis  of  the 
record  made  by  the  pupils  in  their  school  work,  with  due 
reference  also  to  their  health,  their  industry  and  their 
application.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  change  in  the  plan 
of  selecting  the  pupils  was  a  fortunate  one — fortunate, 
because,  as  will  be  shown  later,  several  pupils  were  se- 
lected who  should  not  have  been  sent  to  this  room,  while 
others  who  should  have  been  sent  were  not  selected,  and 
these  mistakes  were  discovered  as  soon  as  mental  tests 
were  used,  so  that  the  superiority  of  the  tests  to  the 
ordinary  classroom  records  of  the  public  school  for  the 
purpose  of  classification  by  ability  was  thus  made  clearly 
manifest.     Fifteen  pupils  were  selected  from  those  in 


The  Organization  11 

the  Leal  School  who  were  ready  to  enter  the  5th  grade 
and  an  equal  number  from  those  who  were  ready  to  enter 
the  6th  grade.  The  room,  then,  consisted  of  30  pupils — 
15  in  the  5th  grade  and  15  in  the  6th  grade — who  repre- 
sented practically  the  top  20  per  cent,  of  the  enrollment 
in  each  of  these  two  grades  in  the  entire  school.* 

The  Control  Classes.  In  addition  to  the  30  pupils 
just  mentioned,  there  were  in  the  Leal  School  57  5th- 
grade  and  62  6th-grade  pupils.  These  were  enrolled  in 
three  different  rooms  and  served  as  a  Control  Group 
for  the  purpose  of  checking  the  results  of  the  various 
educational  and  psychological  tests  which  were  applied 
to  the  selected  pupils.  These  three  rooms  are  referred 
to  in  this  report  as  Room  6G,  Koom  5Y,  and  Room  5-6P. 
Room  6Gr  contained  40  6th-grade  pupils;  Room  5Y  con- 
tained 48  5th-grade  pupils ;  Room  5-6F  contained  19 
5th  and  19  6th-grade  pupils. 

Personal  Data  of  tlie  Selected  Pupils.  In  the  Special 
Fifth  there  were  five  boys  and  ten  girls ;  in  the  Special 
Sixth,  eight  boys  and  seven  girls.  The  median  age  of 
the  Special  Fifth  on  December  31,  1916,  was  10  years,  6 
months,  as  against  a  median  age  on  the  same  date  for  the 
other  57  5th-grade  pupils  in  the  building  of  10  years,  8 
months ;  that  is,  the  experimental  group  ranged  2  months 
younger.  For  the  Special  Sixth  on  the  same  date  the 
median  age  was  11  years,  7  months  and  12  days,  as 
against  12  years  for  the  62  6th-grade  pupils  in  other 
rooms ;  that  is,  the  experimental  group  ranged  4.6  months 
younger. 

A  classification  was  made  of  the  occupations  of  the 
fathers  of  the  children  in  all  the  fifth  and  sixth  grades. 


*In  March,  1916,  two  pupils  were  transferred  from  the  Control  to  the 
Special  Group  and  one  of  the  Special  Group  left  the  city. 


12  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

It  was  found  that  children  from  homes  representing  the 
so-called  'learned  professions'  were  somewhat  more 
likely  to  attain  high  rank  in  school  as  measured  by 
the  ordinary  methods.  Thus,  children  from  faculty 
homes  furnished  somewhat  more  than  their  share  of  the 
selected  group ;  and  if  to  these  are  added  children  from 
homes  representing  the  other  professions,  we  find  that 
these  made  up  a  few  more  than  one-fifth  of  the  Total 
Group  of  5th  and  6th-grade  children,  but  at  least  one- 
third  of  the  Special  Group. 

Previous  School  Progress.  The  school  progress  of 
most  of  the  selected  children  had  been  entirely  normal 
prior  to  their  enrollment  in  the  experimental  room.  Most 
of  them  had  begun  school  at  six  years  of  age  or  there- 
abouts and  had  made  one  school  grade  each  year  since 
then.  Only  one  case  of  repeating  a  grade  was  reported, 
namely,  a  child  who  had  spent  two  years  in  the  first 
grade.  Attention  should  be  called  to  the  fact  that  in 
only  four  or  five  cases  had  the  school  made  any  provision 
whereby  progress  more  rapid  than  that  of  the  average 
child  had  been  possible  for  these  exceptional  children. 


Chapter  II 

CLASSIFICATION  OF  THE  MENTAL  AND  EDU- 
CATIONAL TESTS 

The  two  classes  forming  the  Special  Group  were  or- 
ganized by  the  school  officials,  as  has  just  been  said,  with- 
out the  use  of  any  psychological  or  educational  tests 
other  than  those  ordinarily  used,  like  recitations  and 
examinations.  We  therefore  arranged  our  experimental 
work  upon  the  assumption  that  the  pupils  of  the  Special 
Group,  as  a  group,  would  probably  be  found  superior 
mentally  to  those  remaining  in  the  Control  Group,  but 
that  some  of  the  Special  Group  might  possibly  have  been 
wrongly  placed  there,  while  some  of  the  Control  Group 
might  possibly  have  been  wrongly  left  out  of  the  Special 
Group.  Our  plan  was  to  observe  carefully  the  classroom 
work  of  every  pupil  in  the  Special  Group  and  also  to 
apply  to  each  pupil  a  quite  extensive  series  of  both  men- 
tal and  educational  tests  in  order  to  see  to  what  extent 
the  actual  performance  in  the  classroom  checked  with  the 
results  of  each  test.  Our  plan  was  also  to  apply  as  many 
as  possible  of  the  same  tests  to  pupils  in  the  Control 
Group  in  order  to  determine  whether  the  pupils  of  the 
Special  Group  who  in  their  classroom  work  most  distinct- 
ly surpassed  their  mates  in  the  Control  Group  would 
also  be  found  to  surpass  them  in  the  mental  and  educa- 
tional tests,  and  if  so,  in  which  of  the  tests  the  corre- 
spondence between  school  achievement  and  test  achieve- 
ment was  of  the  highest  degree.  If,  as  we  hoped, 
certain  tests  revealed  a  high  correspondence  of  this  sort, 
then  these  tests  would  possess  a  high  predictive  or  diag- 
nostic value;  that  is,  they  could  be  employed  as  an  ad- 
ministrative device  for  selecting  pupils  for  special  in- 

13 


14  Classes  fob  Gifted  Children 

struction  in  classes  for  the  gifted,  and  possibly  their 
value  in  this  respect  might  be  distinctly  superior  (as, 
indeed,  it  proved  to  be)  to  the  value  of  the  teachers' 
marks  and  estimates. 

It  will  be  understood,  then,  that  our  procedure  was 
empirical.  We  drew  up  at  the  outset  a  lengthy  list  of 
tests  and  fired  them,  if  the  comparison  may  be  permitted, 
like  a  charge  of  buckshot,  to  see  which  ones  hit  the  mark. 
As  the  work  continued,  the  program  was  altered  from 
time  to  time;  certain  projected  tests  were  dropped  be- 
cause they  seemed  certain  to  be  useless  for  our  purposes 
or  certain  to  prove  mere  duplicates  of  others  that  had 
been  employed;  other  tests  were  added  to  explore  new 
aspects  of  the  field  that  were  revealed  in  the  course  of  the 
investigation.  I  have  no  doubt  that  psychologists  and 
schoolmen  will  wonder  why  some  of  the  tests  were  in- 
cluded and  why  others  were  not  included.  The  answer 
can  only  be  that  out  of  the  multitude  that  were  available, 
some  sort  of  choice  had  to  be  made  and  this  choice  simply 
represents  the  best  judgment  of  the  experimenters  under 
the  conditions  that  prevailed.* 

In  the  chapters  that  follow,  the  tests  that  we  used 
have  been  grouped  for  convenience  as  'mental'  tests  and 
'educational'  tests.  This  distinction  is  in  some  cases 
rather  arbitrarily  made.  Naturally,  most  mental  tests 
imply  the  existence  in  the  examinee  of  more  or  less  edu- 
cational training, while  many  so-called  'educational'  tests 
turn  out  to  measure  general  mental  ability,  or  general 
intelligence,  quite  as  much  as  proficiency  in  the  educa- 
tional field  they  aim  to  test.    Thus,  investigators  might 

*In  the  Seventeenth  Yearbook  of  the  National  Society  for  the  Study  of 
Education,  Chapter  VTI,  W.  S.  Monroe  lists  84  standardized  educational 
tests  for  use  in  elementary  grades,  17  for  use  in  arithmetic,  17  for  use  in 
language,  etc.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  it  was  out  of  the  question 
to  do  more  than  select  a  few  samples  from  this  wealth  of  material. 


Classification  of  Tests  15 

differ  as  to  whether  the  Trabue  language  scales,  the 
vocabulary  tests  and  the  Winch  test  are  mental  tests  or 
educational  tests,  whereas  tests  of  spelling,  drawing, 
arithmetic  and  punctuation  would  generally  be  regarded 
as  educational  tests,  and  equivalent  proverbs,  analogies 
and  the  Binet  tests  would  generally  be  regarded  as  men- 
tal tests. 

In  the  present  chapter,  however,  the  tests  are  classi- 
fied according  to  the  manner  of  application  as  'individ- 
ual' or  as  'group'  tests.  This  classification  has  consid- 
erable administrative  significance.  In  point  of  economy 
of  time,  for  instance,  group  tests  have  a  decided  practical 
advantage,  whereas  in  point  of  precise  analysis  of  men- 
tality, individual  tests  have  a  decided  advantage. 

Since  the  order  of  presentation  of  tests  may  have  some 
effect  upon  their  outcome,  the  tests  in  this  chapter  have 
been  listed  also  in  the  order  of  their  use  (with  the  Spe- 
cial Group). 

As  many  as  was  feasible  of  the  tests  were  given  also 
to  the  other  pupils  of  the  fifth  and  sixth  grades  that  we 
have  referred  to  as  the  Control  Classes,  or  Control  Group. 
For  various  reasons  the  tests  were  applied  to  the  Control 
Group  only  after  they  had  been  tried  with  the  Special 
Group,  usually  one  or  two  months  after.  Note  that  on 
this  account  the  Control  Group  gained  a  slight  additional 
advantage  in  maturity  (its  members,  as  has  already  been 
said,  averaged  older  than  those  of  the  Special  Group ) . 

In  the  list  that  follows,  tests  to  which  an  asterisk  is 
prefixed  were  given  to  both  the  Special  and  the  Control 
Group,  except  that  those  thus  starred  among  the  indi- 
vidual tests  were  not  given  to  the  entire  Control  Group, 
but  merely  to  the  number  of  pupils  in  that  group  indi- 
cated in  the  parenthesis  that  follows  the  name  of  the  test. 


16  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 


A .     Individual  Tests 

*Stanford  Revision  of  Binet-Simcn   (Terman)   (20) 

*Analogies  Test   (Whipple's  Test  34A,  Lists  A,  B,  C)    (25) 

*Easy  Directions  Test  (Wood worth  and  Wells)    (15) 

*Hard  Directions  Test    (Woodworth  and  Wells)    (15) 

*Healy  Picture  Test  I   (15) 

*Healy  Picture  Test  II   (15) 

*Knox  Profile  Test   (15) 

*Knox  Diagonal  Test   (15) 

*iPicture  Arrangement  Test   (Fraser  and  Whipple)    (14) 

*Healy-Pintner  Picture  Test 

*Painted  Cube  Test  (Doll)    (7) 

*Marble  Sorting  Test   (Pyle)    (7) 

*Hard  Opposites   (22) 

*Porteus  Tests   (10) 


B.     Group  Tests 

Buckingham    Spelling   Test 

Ayres  Spelling  Test,  List  N. 

Handwriting 

Drawing  a  Church 

Drawing   a   Snowball   Fight 

Courtis  Arithmetic,  Series  B,  Form  2,  Test  1 

Courtis  Arithmetic,  Series  B,  Form  2,  Test  2 

Courtis  Arithmetic,  Series  B,  Form  2,  Tests  3  and  4 
*Equivalent  Proverbs;  Form  VI 

Courtis  Arithmetic,  Series  A,  Form  3,  Tests  2,  3,  and  5 

Courtis  Arithmetic,   Series  A,  Form  3,  Tests  4,  6,  and  7 

Courtis  Arithmetic,  Series  A,  Form  3,  Tests  1,  8 
*Thorndike  Reading  Scale  A 

Thorndike  Scale  Alpha 
*Trabue  Language  Scale  B 

Ayres  Spelling  Test,   List  R 
*Trabue  Language  Scale  0 
*Whipplo  Word  Building  Tests 

*Logical  Memory  Test  "Lincoln  and  the  Pig"   (Whipple's  Test  39) 
*Logical  Memory  Test  "Marble  Statue"   (Whipple's  Test  39) 

Ayres  Spelling  Test,  List  U 

Winch  Composition  Test;   Orphan,   etc.    (Whipple's  Test  46  D2) 

Winch   Composition  Test;    Snowstorm,   etc.    (Whipple's  Test  46  D2) 

Original  Analogies 

Woody  Arithmetic  Test,  Series  A,  Addition 
*Deferred   (2  weeks)   Memory  "Lincoln  and  the  Pig" 

Deferred  (2  weeks)  Memory  "Marble  Statue" 

Woody  Arithmetic  Test,  Series  A,  Subtraction 

Woody  Arithmetic  Test,  Series  A,  Multiplication 

Woody  Arithmetic  Test,  Series  A,  Division 

Thurstone   Substitution   Test 

Digit-Symbol  Substitution  Test   (Whipple's  Test  37B) 

Poetry  Preference  Test 
*Equivalent  Proverbs,   Forms  I  and  II 
*Bonser  Reasoning  Tests,  III,  B;  V,  A  and  B 
*Bonser  Reasoning  Tests,  V,  C  and  D;  and  VI 
*Bonser  Reasoning  Tests,  III,  A 


Classification  of  Tests  17 

Thurstone  Error-Checking  Test 
Completion  Test   (Whipple's  Test  48,  No.  4) 
Completion  Test   (Whipple's  Test  48,  No.  3) 
Thurstone  Reasoning  Test  B 
Constant  Increment  Addition  Test 
*Thurstone  Reasoning  Test  A 

*  Thurstone  Hand  Test 

Cancellation  of  Triangles  (Whipple's  Test  26A) 

Logical  Memory  Test   "Dutch  Homestead"    (Whipple's  Test  39) 

Cancellation  of  Circles  (Whipple's  Test  26A) 

Cancellation  of  7's   (Whipple's  Test  26A) 

*  Drawing  Horse  from  Memory 

*  Drawing  Toy  Wagon  from  Observation 
Cancellation  of  4's  (Whipple's  Test  26A) 
Character-Traits  Directions  Test   (Thurstone) 

*Woody-McCall  Arithmetic,  Mixed  Fundamentals,  Series  B  I 
*Woody-McCall  Arithmetic,   Mixed  Fundamentals,    Series  B  II 
*Thurstone  Punched  Holes  Test 

*  Thurstone   Flag   Test 
*Thurstone  Number  Completion  Test 
*Thurstone   Spatial   Relations  Test  A 
*Bonser  Reasoning  Tests  I  and  II 

Thorndike  Scale  Alpha  2,   Pt.  II,   Steps  4-9 
♦Multiplication  Practise  Test 
*Trabue  Language   Scales  J  and  K 

Visual  Perceptual  Learning    (Manuel) 

Esthetic  Appreciation  Test  (Thorndike) 
*N.  Y.  Ventilation  Commission  Vocabulary  Test 

Easy  Opposites,  List  III 
♦Completion  of  Number  Series  (Coy) 
♦Punctuation  Test 

*Steacy  Drawing  Construction  Test,   1-20 
*Steacy  Drawing  Construction  Test,   21-40 
*Steacy  Drawing  Construction  Test,   41-100 

It  is  worth  while  saying  that  in  all  the  testing  work 
the  pupils,  especially  those  in  the  Special  Group,  dis- 
played an  admirable  attitude.  They  were  unusually  well- 
disposed  toward  the  testing;  most  of  them  enjoyed  it 
greatly,  were  eager  to  learn  their  scores  and  regarded 
each  opportunity  to  try  a  new  test  as  a  distinct  treat. 

The  description  of  these  tests  in  detail — methods  of 
application,  directions,  scoring  and  interpretation  of 
data — would  be  impossible  in  this  account.  I  aim  in  the 
chapters  that  follow  to  make  the  presentation  cover  these 
various  points  for  each  test,  but  just  as  briefly  as  is 
consistent  with  intelligent  understanding  of  the  work 
that  was  done.     The  quantitative  results  in  particular 


18  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

will  be  limited  in  the  main  to  the  presentation  of  the 
minimal,  average  (or  median)  and  maximal  scores  for 
each  grade  in  the  Special  Room  and  for  the  correspond- 
ing grades  in  the  Control  Classes.  Comment  on  the 
results  will  be  restricted  mainly  to  the  significance  of  the 
test  for  the  purpose  of  selecting  pupils  for  a  gifted  class. 
Readers  who  have  no  professional  interest  in  the  neces- 
sarily somewhat  technical  discussion  of  these  details 
about  the  experimental  work  may  prefer  to  skim  quickly 
over  the  material  in  Chapters  III  and  IV  and  resume  the 
discussion  at  Chapter  V. 


Chapter  III 
THE  MENTAL  TESTS  AND  THEIR  OUTCOMES 

All  of  the  individual  tests  and  about  twenty  of  the 
group  tests  may  properly  be  classed  as  mental  tests. 
These  will  be  described  here,  individual  tests  first,  then 
group  tests,  and  in  an  order  such  as  to  bring  into  juxta- 
position tests  of  similar  character,  regardless  of  the  order 
in  which  they  were  applied  to  the  pupils. 

A.      INDIVIDUAL  TESTS 

1.  The  Binet-Simon  Test  (Stanford  Revision).  Be- 
cause the  Binet  scale  is  in  such  common  use  and  because 
it  is  the  best  single  measure  we  possess  of  the  general 
mental  capacity  of  elementary-school  children,  we  began 
our  testing  of  the  30  pupils  that  had  been  selected  for 
us  by  a  very  thorough  application  of  the  Stanford  Revi- 
sion of  these  tests. 

.As  has  been  shown,  our  selected  pupils  are  slightly 
younger  chronologically  (2  months  in  the  5th  and  4.6 
months  in  the  6th  grade)  than  the  pupils  left  in  the 
Control  Group.  In  mental  age,  however,  they  are  dis- 
tinctly 'older.'  The  average  mental  age  of  the  Special 
Fifth  was  12  years,  5.5  months;  of  the  Special  Sixth, 
13  years.  In  mental  age,  then,  the  Special  Sixth  is  only 
half  a  year  in  advance  of  the  Special  Fifth.  Thus  our 
selected  5th-grade  group  is  as  old  mentally  as  the  aver- 
age 7th-grade  pupil ;  our  selected  6th-grade  group  is  as 
old  mentally  as  the  average  pupil  just  beginning  the 
8th  grade. 

In  terms  of  intelligence  quotient  (I.Q.)  the  Special 
Fifth  ranged  from  101.5  to  146,  with  an  average  of  119.3 ; 

19 


20 


Classes  for  Gifted  Children 


the  Special  Sixth  ranged  from  99.3  to  133.1,  with  an 
average  of  115.9.  The  two  gifted  pupils  discovered  by 
our  mental  tests  in  the  Control  Group  and  transferred  in 
March  to  the  Special  Room  had  mental  ages  of  16  years, 
5  months,  and  15  years,  11  months,  with  I.  Q's  of  167 
and  135,  respectively.* 

SUMMARY  OF  RESULTS  OF  BINET  TESTS  OF  THE  SPECIAL  GROUP 


Grade        Pupil 


1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 


Chronological  Age 
Years  Months 
10-1 
10-0 
10-3 
11-0 
10-7 
10-5 
10-3 
10-3 
11-1 

9-10 
10-3 
11-1 
10-1 
10-3 
10-10 


Mental  Age 
Years  Months 
13-11 
14-8 
11-3 
11-2 
11-4 
13-2 
11-10 
12-7 
12-0 
11-7 
14-6 
13-5 
10-3 
13-5 
11-11 


Intelligence  Quotient 

138.0 
146.6 
109.7 
101.5 
107.0 
126.4 
115.4 
122.7 
108.2 
109.3 
141.4 
121.0 
101.6 
130.9 
110.0 


Average 

10-5 

12-5.5 

119.3 

rade        Pupil 

Chronological  Age 

Mental  Age 

Intelligence  Q 

Years  Months 

Years  Months 

6                 16 

10-4 

13-9 

133.1 

6                 17 

12-1 

14-9 

122.0 

6                 18 

11-7 

12-5 

107.2 

6                  19 

11-2 

13-11 

124.6 

6                  20 

11-4 

11-9 

103.6 

6                  21 

12-3 

13-1 

107.0 

6                  22 

11-7 

12-6 

124.6 

6                  23 

9-7 

12-9 

133.0 

6          •        24 

11-7 

11-6 

99.3 

6                  25 

11-4 

12-5 

110.0 

6                  26 

10-7 

12-7 

118.8 

6                  27 

11-4 

12-10 

113.0 

6                  28 

10-10 

12-6 

115.3 

6                  29 

11-0 

12-2 

110.6 

6                  30 

12-1 

16-1 

133.1 

Average 


Y35t 
F34f 


11-3 


9-10 
11-9.5 


13-0 


16-5 
15-11 


115.9 


167.0 
135.0 


*Fewer  than  10  children  in  a  thousand  are  as  good  as  our  pupil  with 
an  I.  Q.  of  135.  The  highest  I.  Q.  found  by  Terrnan  was  160,  so  that 
we  may  surmise  that  our  girl  with  an  I.  Q.  of  167  is  probably  better  than 
the  best  child  in  ten  thousand.  Note  that  she  would  have  failed  to  receive 
an  opportunity  to  profit  by  her  extraordinary  ability  had  she  not  been 
'discovered'  by  our  tests.  The  average  I.  Q.  of  the  Special  Sixth,  116,  is 
reached,  according  to  Terman,  by  the  best  10  children  in  a  hundred. 

■(•Transferred  to  Special  Group  in  March,   1917. 


Mental  Tests  and  Outcomes  21 

Notice  that  in  our  very  first  mental  test  several  of 
the  pupils  judged  by  the  school  authorities  to  be  espe- 
cially competent  are  not  especially  competent  as  judged 
by  the  Binet  test.  The  situation  may  be  stated  conven- 
iently thus.  If  the  selection  of  the  top  20  per  cent,  of 
the  school  population  had  given  us  pupils  in  the  top  20 
per  cent,  of  intelligence,  all  I.  Q  's  should  have  been  110 
and  over;  actually  there  were  6  pupils  in  the  Special 
Fifth  and  5  pupils  in  the  Special  Sixth  that  showed  I.  Q  's 
lower  than  110. 

To  prove  that  the  reverse  situation  held  true,  that 
pupils  of  really  superior  intelligence  had  been  mistaken- 
ly passed  over  in  selecting  for  the  Special  Room,  Miss 
Coy,  with  some  assistance  from  Dr.  Manuel,  made  care- 
ful Binet  tests  of  20  pupils  in  our  Control  Group.  Of 
these  20,  six  were  selected  by  their  teachers  as  being 
"average  pupils,"  and  six  more  were  selected  by  their 
teachers  as  being  "below  average  in  their  school  work"; 
five  were  examined  because  they  showed  signs  of  special 
talent  in  drawing ;  two  because  of  remarkable  showing  in 
certain  of  the  group  tests  (the  two  pupils  transferred 
to  our  Special  Room  in  March)  and  one  because  he 
showed  such  remarkable  ability  in  language,  coupled 
with  such  poor  ability  in  arithmetic.  Of  these  20  pupils, 
six  turned  out  to  have  I.  Q's  higher  than  the  median 
I.  Q.  of  our  Special  Group,  yet  three  of  these  six  had 
been  definitely  characterized  as  "average  in  school 
work. ' ' 

Another  matter  of  interest :  in  order  to  see  in  what 
respects  our  Special  Sixth  excelled  our  Special  Fifth, 
the  various  Binet  tests  were  classified  roughly  into  vari- 
ous categories  from  which  it  appeared  that  the  Sixth 
surpassed  the  Fifth  chiefly  in  vocabulary  and  in  the 


22  Classes  fob  Gifted  Children 

more  difficult  kinds  of  reasoning  ability;*  the  former 
difference  would  appear  to  be  due  largely  to  difference 
in  duration  of  school  training;  the  latter  doubtless  to 
difference  in  school  training,  plus  difference  in  maturity. 

2.  Tlie  Four  Form-Boards.  The  results  from  the 
two  Healy  picture  puzzles  and  the  two  Knox  form-boards 
indicate  that  in  the  type  of  mental  activity  demanded 
by  these  tests  "bright"  children  are  not  necessarily  more 
competent  than  "average"  children.  Numerous  pupils 
from  the  Control  Group  made  better  records  than  the 
average  scores  of  our  Special  Group. 

3.  Picture-Arrangement  Test.  Five  sets  of  Foxy 
Grandpa  pictures  were  taken  from  the  sets  originally 
prepared  and  tested  by  Fraser  and  Whipple.  Certain 
difficulties  of  method  and  of  scoring  that  have  since  been 
partially  circumvented  by  Miss  Bowlerf  prevented  us 
from  getting  out  of  this  test  all  that  it  promises.  Five 
of  the  14  pupils  tested  from  the  Control  Group  sur- 
passed the  average  performance  of  the  Special  Group. 

4.  Healy-Pintner  Picture  Completion  Test.  The 
method  followed  was  that  described  in  Chapter  III  of 
The  Picture  Completion  Test,  by  Pintner  and  Anderson. 
In  this  book  the  writers  anticipate  that  the  ability  de- 
manded by  the  test  is  like  that  demanded  by  language- 
completion  tests,  but  our  results  do  not  accord  with  this 
anticipation;  on  the  contrary,  the  members  of  our  Spe- 
cial Group  do  no  better  than  would  be  warranted  by 
their  chronological  age.  Our  scores  are :  for  the  Special 
Fifth,  poorest  172,  average  442.6,  best  589 ;  for  the  Spe- 


*The  Special  Fifth  surpassed  the  Special  Sixth  in  memory  for  digits 
and  in  tests  dealing  with  space  and  form  (except  the  16-year  code  test)  : 
it  equalled  the  Special  Sixth  in  defining  abstract  words,  in  the  dissected 
sentences  test,  in  the  10  and  12-year  tests  for  seeing  resemblances,  in  the 
14-year  induction  test  and  in  the  ball  and  field  and  the  president  and 
king  tests. 

^Psychol.     Clinic,  April   15,    1917. 


Mental  Tests  and  Outcomes  23 

cial  Sixth,  poorest  286,  average  482,  best  646.  The  score 
442.6  is  about  the  53d  percentile  for  10  years ;  score  482 
is  about  the  56th  percentile  for  11  years,  according  to 
Pintner.  If  time  be  included  in  the  scoring,  the  case  is 
even  worse.  The  fact  that  many  adults  take  a  hyper- 
critical attitude  toward  the  picture,  are  disturbed  by  its 
lack  of  perspective  and  unnatural  collocations  of  scenes, 
may  possibly  be  reflected  in  the  attitude  of  some  of  our 
bright  pupils. 

5.  Painted  Cube  Construction  Test.  We  used  the 
plan  advocated  (in  a  letter)  by  E.  A.  Doll,  of  the  Vine- 
-land  Training  School,  but  had  to  modify  his  directions 
to  secure  better  grasp  of  the  problem.  The  test  requires 
the  assembling  of  27  cubes  to  make  one  large  cube  paint- 
ed on  the  outside  only.  It  proved  more  difficult  than 
was  expected;  the  time  for  solution  ranged  from  6.5  to 
103  minutes  (median  about  20  minutes),  i.  e.,  the  ease 
of  solution  varies  enormously  with  different  children. 
It  promises  to  become  a  valuable  test,  particularly  when 
certain  simplified  variants  of  it,  like  asking  for  the  con- 
struction of  the  bottom  layer  only,  have  been  worked  out 
more  carefully. 

6.  The  Porteus  Maze  Tests*  This  series  of  tests, 
devised  by  S.  D.  Porteus,  has  been  reported  by  several 
writers  as  affording  fairly  good  correlations  with  Binet 
mental  age.  We  did  not  find  it  satisfactory  at  all.  The 
series  did  not  differentiate  our  Special  Group  from  the 
10  pupils  tested  from  the  Control  Group,  nor  did  the 
results  check  up  with  the  mental  ages  previously  de- 
termined by  the  Binet  method. 

7.  Pyle  Marble-Sorting  Test.  Through  the  cour- 
tesy of  Dr.  W.  H.  Pyle,  of  the  University  of  Missouri, 

*These  tests  were  administered  by  Miss  Harriett  Berninger,  Assistant 
in  Education. 


24  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

we  were  permitted  to  borrow  his  original  apparatus  and 
to  have  access  to  the  unpublished  master 's  thesis  of  Miss 
E.  Waltner,  The  Psychology  of  the  Negro,  in  which  meth- 
ods and  results  for  marble-sorting  are  embodied.  This 
test  measures  the  speed  with  which  children  learn  at  a 
given  signal  to  select  marbles  of  given  sizes  or  colors 
and  to  bring  them,  by  a  designated  series  of  simple  move- 
ments, to  given  positions.  Our  results  indicate  that  our 
Special  Group  fail  to  reach  the  standard  performance  of 
their  chronological  age  in  Trial  I,  while  their  improve- 
ment in  Trial  II  is  somewhat  greater  than  their  perform- 
ance in  Trial  I  would  lead  us  to  expect.  This  low  ability 
in  a  learning  test  that  combines  manual  skill  with  intel- 
ligent guidance  may  be  contrasted  with  the  remarkably 
high  records  of  this  Group  in  the  learning  test  in  multi- 
plication. Correspondence  with  Dr.  Pyle  has  failed  to 
account  for  the  poor  showing  of  our  pupils  in  compar- 
ison with  his  results  at  Columbia,  Missouri. 

8.  Easy  Directions  and  Hard  Directions  Tests. 
These  are  the  rather  well-known  tests  described  by  Wood- 
worth  and  Wells  in  their  Psychological  Monograph  on 
' '  Association  Tests. ' '  Our  Special  Fifth  reaches  the  20th 
percentile  found  by  Dr.  W.  S.  Miller  for  high-school 
freshmen,*  our  Special  Sixth  the  53d  percentile  for 
the  freshmen.  This  group,  in  fact,  is  in  this  test  ad- 
vanced about  three  years  beyond  the  standard  perform- 
ance. Several  pupils  were  found  in  the  Control  Classes 
that  surpassed  these  averages  of  the  Special  Classes. 

The  scores  (per  cent,  of  accuracy  divided  by  the  time 
in  seconds)  run  as  follows: 


*In  an  as  yet  unpublished  doctorate  thesis  from  the  University  of 
Illinois,  entitled  "Mental  Tests  and  the  Performance  of  High-School  Students 
as  Conditioned  by  Age,  Sex  and  Other  Factors." 


Mental  Tests  and  Outcomes  25 

Easy  Directions  Hard  Directions 

Grade                                    Poorest       Aver.        Best  Poorest       Aver.        Best 

Special   Fifth                             .344            .590        .736  .206            .372           .529 

Special   Sixth                          .486           .774     1.045  .312           .519          .862 

9.  Easy  and  Hard  Opposites  Tests*  An  easy  oppo- 
sites  test  was  given  to  the  Special  Group  as  a  group  test 
in  March,  1917.  The  stimulus  words  were  poor,  strong, 
sick,  slow,  young,  outside,  sharp,  thin,  large,  beginning. 
The  responses  were  written,  and  each  pupil  recorded  his 
own  time  by  glancing,  when  he  finished,  at  the  Whipple 
seconds  clock.  Later,  a  hard  opposites  series  (enemy, 
attractive,  over,  deccitfid,  public,  talkative,  proud,  calm, 
to  hasten,  to  hate)  was  given  as  an  individual  test  to  the 
same  group  and  also  to  22  members  of  the  Control 
Group.  In  this  test  each  stimulus  word  was  typewritten 
on  a  card  and  each  response  was  timed  with  a  stop-watch. 

We  found,  what  other  users  of  this  test  have  found, 
that  it  serves  well  as  an  index  of  intelligence:  thus,  13 
of  our  15  Special  Fifth  pupils  surpass  the  average  per- 
formance of  the  Control  Fifth;  similarly,  of  the  12  pu- 
pils tested  in  the  Control  Sixth,  the  only  two  that  sur- 
passed the  average  performance  of  the  Special  Sixth 
were  pupils  with  I.  Q.?s  of  104  and  130. 

10.  The  Analogies  Test.]  This  test  demands  the 
perception  of  relatively  abstract  verbal  relationships  and 
has  been  found  to  be  one  of  the  best  indexes  of  this  im- 
portant aspect  of  general  mental  ability.  From  the  re- 
sults obtained  by  Dr.  W.  S.  Miller  with  List  C  in  his 
testing  of  all  four  classes  in  the  Urbana  High  School,  we 
had  supposed  that  the  test  could  not  be  used  in  the  5th 
or  6th  grade,  at  least  that  List  C  would  be  impossible. 


*The  hard  opposites  tests  were  administered  by  Miss  Dora  Keen,  grad- 
uate student  in  Education. 

fPor  details  of  administration,  see  the  writer's  Manual  of  Mental  and 
Physical  Tests,  Second  Edition,  Test  34A,  Part  II.  pp.  89-94. 


26  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

Actually,  the  average  performance  of  our  Special  Fifth 
(in  October,  1916)  is  as  good  as  15  per  cent,  of  high- 
school  freshmen,  while  the  Special  Sixth  averages  as  good 

Average  Times,  in  Seconds  Per  Card,  Analogies  Test 

List  A  List  B  List  C 

Grade  Poorest  Aver.  Best  Poorest  Aver.   Best  Poorest  Aver.   Best 

Sp     Fifth  12.89     5.70    3.11     13.08     9.54     3.75      24.00     17.85   8.76 

Sp.    Sixth  6.28    4.10    2.90    12.56    7.72    4.39      22.56    15.94  9.77 

as  30  per  cent,  of  the  freshmen.  Moreover,  some  of  the 
best  scores  obtained  are  truly  remarkable:  one  of  our 
Special  Fifth  girls  reached  a  score  surpassed  by  only  30 
per  cent,  of  high-school  seniors,  or  in  other  words  did 
better  than  the  average  pupils  seven  years  older  than 
she  is;  another,  our  girl  with  the  167  I.  Q.,  confirmed  our 
diagnosis  of  her  ability  by  reaching  the  median  score  of 
high-school  juniors,  or,  in  other  words,  by  doing  as  well 
as  the  average  pupil  six  years  older  than  she  is.  Ke- 
markably  high  scores  were  made  by  at  least  a  third  of 
the  Special  Group.  When  we  tested  25  pupils  in  the 
Control  Group  we  unearthed  there  seven  who  surpassed 
the  corresponding  average  for  the  Special  Group.  Of 
these  seven,  two  were  the  pupils  Y35  and  F34  afterward 
transferred  to  the  Special  Koom.  We  feel  confident  that 
the  analogies  test  brings  out  an  ability  that  is  decidedly 
symptomatic  for  the  purposes  of  selecting  gifted  chil- 
dren. 

B.      GROUP  TESTS 

11.  Cancellation.  The  Special  Group  alone,  in  De- 
cember, 1916,  and  January,  1917,  were  given  four  can- 
cellation tests — triangles  and  circles  from  a  sheet  of 
geometrical  forms  and  7's  and  4's  from  a  sheet  of  digits. 
The  material  and  the  method  of  using  it  for  group  test- 
ing have  been  described  by  me  elsewhere.*  The  time-limit 


*Manual  of  Mental  and  Physical  Tests,  Part  I,  Test  26,  pp.  309-310. 


Mental  Tests  and  Outcomes  27 

of  2  minutes  proved  satisfactory,  except  with  the  can- 
cellation of  circles,  which  is  so  much  easier  that  several 
pupils  finished  in  1  minute,  25  seconds.  The  scores  (one 
unit  for  each  cancellation,  less  two  units  for  each  omis- 
sion) are  hardly  worth  reporting  here,  because  we  have 
no  data  for  comparison  and  because  the  time-limit  meth- 
od turned  out  to  be  unsatisfactory  on  the  whole.  The 
cancellation  test  has  steadily  refused  to  yield  good  corre- 
lations with  general  intelligence,  and  if  undertaken  at 
all,  should  be  conducted  with  the  use  of  the  seconds 
clock  recommended  in  my  Manual.  In  general,  our  sixth 
grade  surpassed  our  fifth  grade.  The  foot-rule  correla- 
tion between  cancelling  4  's  and  7  's  is  0.77  in  the  Special 
Fifth  and  0.20  in  the  Special  Sixth,  that  between  can- 
celling 7  's  and  cancelling  triangles  is  0.51  in  the  Special 
Sixth. 

12.  Memory  ("How  Lincoln  Helped  the  Pig"  and 
"The  Marole  Statue").  October  25,  1916,  the  'logical 
memory'  test  known  as  "How  Mr.  Lincoln  Helped  the 
Pig"  was  given  to  the  Special  Group;  it  was  adminis- 
tered and  scored  as  described  by  the.  writer.*  The  first 
reproduction  was  called  for  directly  after  the  reading 
of  the  passage  by  the  examiner,  the  second  reproduction 
two  weeks  later.  In  the  latter  part  of  January,  1917, 
the  same  test  was  given  in  the  same  way  to  the  Control 
Group.  On  October  26th,  another  similar  test,  known 
as  "The  Marble  Statue,"!  was  given  to  the  Special 
Group  and  it  was  likewise  given  to  the  Control  Group 
about  three  months  later.  Unfortunately,  this  latter 
group  was  tested  only  for  immediate  reproduction  with 
this  second  memory  test.  The  chief  results,  in  terms  of 
average  number  of  ideas  reproduced,  are  given  herewith. 


*Ibid.  Part  II,  Test  39,  pp.  207-208. 
jlbid,  Part  II.  p.   208. 


28  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

1.     "How  Lincoln  Helped  lite  Pig;"  Average  Ideas  Reproduced 

A.     Immediate  Reproduction 

Special   Fifth   23.40  Special   Sixth   24.46 

Control  Fifth  22.97  Control   Sixth  22.59 

B.      Deferred   Reproduction    (2   weeks) 
Special  Fifth   21.20  Special   Sixth   22.00 

Control  Fifth  16.34  Control  Sixth   18.22 

2.      "Marble   Statue;"    Average  Ideas   Reproduced 

A.  Immediate  Reproduction 

Special   Fifth   35.40  Special    Sixth  38.53 

Control  Fifth  29.39  Control  Sixth  31.59 

B.  Deferred   Reproduction 

Special   Fifth   30.70  Special   Sixth   32.50 

Control   Fifth    ,  Control  Sixth    

It  will  be  noted  that  the  superiority  of  the  Special 
Group  over  the  Control  Group  is  more  evident  in  the 
Marblte  Statue  test,  which  is  at  once  more  difficult  and 
also  richer  in  possibilities  of  good  scores;  further,  that 
the  superiority  is  more  evident  in  deferred  than  in  im- 
mediate reproduction.  Generally  speaking,  our  Special 
Group  can  recall  as  many  ideas  two  weeks  after  hearing 
a  passage  read  as  the  Control  Group  can  recall  directly 
after  hearing  it  read.  This  suggests  that  for  gifted  chil- 
dren reviews  need  not  be  so  frequent  nor  so  detailed  as 
for  ordinary  children — a  matter  that  will  be  discussed 
more  fully  in  a  later  chapter. 

13.  Memory  ("The  Dutch  Homestead").  This  test, 
like  the  preceding,  followed  the  directions  given  in  the 
writer's  Manual;  it  was  distributed  to  each  pupil  in 
printed  form  and  he  had  two  minutes  to  read  it  before 
writing  what  he  could  recall.  Unfortunately,  there  was 
no  deferred  reproduction  and  no  opportunity  to  test  the 
Control  Group.  We  have  compared  the  results  with  the 
distributions  obtained  by  Dr.  W.  S.  Miller  in  the  Ur- 
bana  High  School,*  and  note  that  there  is  an  unexpect- 
edly wide  distribution  of  scores  (8  to  42  in  the  Special 


*In  the  doctorate  thesis  of  the  University  of  Illinois,  already  referred 
to  and  as  yet  unpublished. 


Mental  Tests  and  Outcomes  29 

Fifth  and  9  to  46  in  the  Special  Sixth),  also  that  the 
median  of  the  Special  Fifth  reaches  the  18th  percentile, 
and  that  of  the  Special  Sixth  the  21st  percentile  of  high- 
school  freshmen,  while  some  of  our  highest  scores  equal 
the  median  records  of  high-school  sophomores  and  jun- 
iors. 

14.  Manuel  Perceptual  Learning  Test.  This  test 
was  given  by  Dr.  Manuel  to  the  Special  Group  only  in 
his  endeavor  to  measure  ability  to  reproduce  linear  rela- 
tions after  visual  exposure.  The  children  were  shoAvn 
a  series  of  cards  on  which  were  drawn  end-to-end  com- 
binations of  4,  6,  8  or  10  straight  or  curved  lines.*  A 
given  card  was  shown  about  5  seconds,  when  the  children 
tried  to  draw  it.  The  same  card  was  shown  again,  and 
a  new  drawing  made,  and  so  on  for  five  exposures  for 
each  card.  The  score  was  obtained  by  a  somewhat  elab- 
orate method  of  computing  the  degree  of  resemblance 
between  the  fifth  drawing  and  the  exposed  card. 

The  results  do  not  indicate  any  sure  correlation  with 
general  intelligence,  for  while  the  correlation  with  men- 
tal age  came  to  .59  in  our  Special  Fifth,  it  was  practi- 
cally zero  with  our  Special  Sixth. 

15.  Letter  Substitution  Test  (Tliur  stone  ) .  This  test 
was  developed  by  Dr.  L.  L.  Thurstone,  of  the  Carnegie 
Institute  of  Technology.  The  key  at  the  top  of  the  page 
comprises  20  words,  like  umbrella,  equinox,  etc.,  while 
the  substitutions  that  are  to  be  made  are  the  writing  of 
the  last  letter  of  each  word  after  its  first  letter,  as  this 
appears  below  in  a  series  of  vertical  columns  (10  groups 
of  three  columns  each).  For  example,  whenever  u  is 
printed  in  the  column,  a  is  to  be  written  against  it  (as 


*The  figures  were  similar  to  those  used  by  Judd  and  Cowling  in 
their  Studies  in  Perceptual  Development,  Psychological  Review  Monographs, 
8:  1907,  349-369. 


30  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

shown  in  the  key  word  umbrella)  ;  whenever  e  is  printed, 
x  is  written,  etc.  The  key  remains  in  sight.  The  test 
proceeds  for  10  minutes,  with  provision  for  starting  on 
a  new  group  of  columns  each  minute.  The  score  is  in- 
dicated by  the  total  number  of  correct  substitutions  in 
10  minutes.  We  also  asked  each  pupil,  after  the  10- 
minute  trial,  to  write  the  key  words  from  memory. 

The  chief  results  of  the  test  administered  to  the  Spe- 
cial Group  November  27,  1916,  are,  in  number  of  sub- 
stitutions : 

Poorest  Median  Best 

Special  Fifth  65  112  177 

Special   Sixth  95  134  287 

Unfortunately,  we  have  no  control  records  with  which 
to  compare.  The  test  seems  to  be  a  good,  simple  test  of 
rapidity  of  learning.  The  best  record  in  the  Special 
Fifth  was  made  by  a  pupil  who  also  made  the  best  record 
for  that  grade  in  the  Pyle  learning  test  (marble-sorting) 
and  in  the  Multiplication  practise  test,  and  the  extra- 
ordinary record  in  the  Special  Sixth,  287,  was  made  by 
the  pupil  whose  record  in  the  Pyle  learning  test  was 
best  for  that  grade. 

16.  Digit-Symbol  Substitution  Test.  This  test  and 
the  manner  of  administration  followed  exactly  the  direc- 
tions specified  by  the  writer,*  including  the  preliminary 
blackboard  explanation.  The  test,  then,  was  continued 
for  4  minutes,  and  the  score  could  be  arranged  to  show 
the  number  of  substitutions  by  30-minute  periods. 

The  average  performance  was  63.1  for  the  Special 
Fifth  and  69  for  the  Special  Sixth.  The  test  was  not 
given  t£  our  Control  Group,  but  it  was  planned  instead 
to  compare  our  score  with  the  averages  per  minute  pub- 
lished by  Pyle  for  the  same  test.     These  averages  are 

*Manual,  Part  II,  Test  37   (B),  p.  136. 


Mental  Tests  and  Outcomes  31 

classified  by  sex  and  age  thus :  for  the  years  9  to  12,  in- 
clusive, for  boys;  12.6,  15.4,  16.3  and  19.1  and  for  girls: 
15.7,  18.8,  18.5  and  22.7.  The  median  age  of  our  Spe- 
cial Fifth  is  10  years,  6  months;  its  boys  average  14.5 
and  its  girls  15.5  in  this  test — both  slightly  below  the 
age  standard.  The  median  age  of  our  Special  Sixth  is 
11  years,  7  months;  its  boys  average  15.6  and  its  girls 
19.3 — both  again  slightly  below  the  age  standards  set  by 
Pyle.  Since,  however,  his  averages  are  based  on  about 
half  a  hundred  cases  only  and  are  accompanied  by  aver- 
age deviations  of  about  4  units,  it  would  be  fair  to  say 
that  our  Special  Classes  just  about  fulfill  expectations 
for  their  chronological  ages  in  this  substitution  test. 

The  performance  by  half-minute  intervals  is  sum- 
marized herewith. 

Average  Number  of  Correct  Substitutions  by  30-Second  Intervals:     Digit- 
Symbol   Substitution    Test 
Intervals  12345678 

Special  Fifth  4.54  5.69  8.15  9.31  7.00  9.46  7.69  8.08 
Special  Sixth         5.93        9.08        8.00      10.10        8.08      11.20        8.23        9.15 

17.  CJiaracter-Traits  Directions  Test  (TJiur stone). 
The  test  is  one  of  the  type  designed  to  present  a  problem 
of  classification  on  a  two-fold  basis.  Forty  traits,  like 
reliable,  lazy,  studious,  etc.,  are  presented,  typewritten. 
The  task  is  to  designate  by  a  plus  sign  the  desirable  and 
by  a  minus  sign  the  undesirable  qualities,  with  the  added 
proviso  that  the  sign  shall  be  made  in  the  left-hand  of 
the  two  columns  provided  for  the  purpose  if  the  word 
contains  the  letter  a,  but  in  the  right-hand  column  if  not. 
The  letter  a  is  printed  at  the  head  of  the  left-hand  col- 
umn. The  test  was  administered  to  the  Special  Group 
in  January,  1917,  as  a  group  test,  with  a  time-limit  of  3 
minutes,  and  scored  by  rights  minus  twice  the  wrongs. 
The  minimal,  median  and  maximal  scores  for  our  Spe- 


32  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

cial  Fifth  are  —  1,  11.4  and  27 ;  for  our  Special  Sixth,  —32, 
15.25  and  25,  respectively.  There  is  some  question 
whether  this  scoring  is  satisfactory.  We  need  further 
information  to  speak  definitely  about  the  usefulness  of 
the  test:  the  idea  of  testing  speed  and  accuracy  of 
simultaneous  classification  under  two  independent  cate- 
gories seems  an  excellent  one. 

18.  Word  Building,  I  and  II  (Whipple).*  Both 
sheets  of  this  test  were  given  to  the  Special  Group  Octo- 
ber 24,  1916,  and  to  the  Control  Group  about  the  end  of 
January,  1917. 

The  averages,  as  the  accompanying  table  shows  in- 

Averages,  Word  Building,  I  and  II 
Special   Fifth   21.00  Special    Sixth    24.70 

Control  Fifth   19.06  Control  Sixth  21.27 

dicate  in  general  a  superiority  of  the  Special  over  the 
Control  Group  and  of  the  Sixth  over  the  Fifth  Grade. 
Similar  results  can  be  obtained  by  comparing  these 
scores  with  the  percentile  distributions  for  11-year  and 
12-year  old  boys,  as  given  in  my  Manual.  The  average 
of  the  Special  Group  is  close  to  the  median  while  the 
average  for  the  Control  Group  is  near  the  38th  to  40th 
percentile  by  this  comparison.  In  general,  then,  the 
Special  Group  does  do  better  than  the  Control  Group  in 
word  building,  but  on  the  other  hand  the  range  of  dis- 
tribution is  so  wide  that  these  averages  have  a  consider- 
able degree  of  unreliability;  there  are  numerous  poor 
as  well  as  numerous  good  scores  among  the  Special 
Group,  so  that  the  test  on  that  account  is  less  diagnostic 
than  some  others  we  tried. 

19.  Terman  and  Childs  Completion  Test.\  When 
this  test  was  given  to  our  pupils  on  December  8,  1916, 

*  Manual,  Part  II,  Test  47,  pp.  274-283. 

tDescribed  as  Completion  Test  No.  4  in  the  Manual,  Part  II,  pp.  285-7. 


Poorest 

Median 

Best 

12.8 

22.3 

38.0 

17.4 

28.2 

41.2 

Mental  Tests  and  Outcomes  33 

they  had  already  had  experience  with  the  Trabue  com- 
pletion tests,  so  that  the  general  problem  was  familiar. 
Five  of  them  also  had  heard  at  some  time  or  other  the 
story,  The  Strength  of  the  Eagle,  on  which  the  test  is 
based. 

When  these  five  pupils  are  excluded  and  the  results 
are  scored  as  prescribed  by  Whipple  for  a  10-minute 
time-limit,  they  run : 

Special  Fifth 
Special   Sixth 

We  have  no  comparison  records  from  our  Control 
Group.  The  scores  published  by  Terman  and  Childs  are 
based  on  a  15-minute  time-limit,  while  those  reported  by 
Fraser  for  a  10-minute  time-limit  do  not  run  below  13 
years.  The  test  had  value  for  us  mainly  in  the  manner 
in  which  it  ranked  pupils  within  the  Special  Group. 

20.  Terman  Completion  Test*  The  Special  Group 
received  this  test  three  days  later  than  the  preceding 
test.  After  the  passage  Why  the  Mole  is  Blind  had  been 
read  to  the  pupils  once,  they  were  allowed  7  minutes  to 
fill  in  the  deleted  text.  Scored  by  giving  2  for  each  cor- 
rectly filled  blank,  the  minimal,  median  and  maximal 
scores  are:  ''Special  Fifth,  41,  74,  171;  Special  Sixth, 
28,  86,  153.  We  have  no  comparison  records.  Within 
the  Special  Group  it  may  be  noted  that  pupils  with 
high  I.  Q.'s  make  high  scores  in  this  test,  though  pupils 
with  low  I.  Q.  's  do  not  always  make  low  records  in  it. 

21.  Trabue  Language  Scales,  B  and  C.\  These  two 
scales  were  given  to  the  Special  Group  October  19  and 
23,  1916,  and  to  Rooms  F,  G  and  Y  from  two  to  three 
months  later. 


*Prescrihed  as  Completion  Test  No.  3  in  the  Manual. 
tR.  M.  Trabue.      Completion  Test  Language  Scale*. 


Poorest  Med. 

Best 

Special    Sixth        21        27.5 
Control  Sixth        13        23.3 

36 
32 

34  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

Comparing  our  results  with  the  tentative  standards 
laid  down  by  Trabue  it  appears  that  our  Control  Fifth 
reaches  about  half  way  between  his  sixth  and  his  seventh- 
grade  standards;  while  our  Special  Fifth  median  just 
reaches  the  eighth-grade  standard  and  our  Special  Sixth 

Scores  for  Trabue  Scales  B  and  C  Combined 

Poorest  Med.     Best 
Special    Fifth       21        26.7        33 
Control  Fifth        12        23.2        32 

almost  the  ninth-grade  standard.  That  is,  our  regular 
classes  run  almost  a  year  ahead,  and  our  selected  pupils 
about  three  years  ahead,  of  the  Trabue  standards.  The 
best  record  in  our  Special  Fifth  reaches,  and  the  best 
record  in  our  Special  Sixth  exceeds,  Trabue 's  standard 
for  the  twelfth  grade.  In  comparing  these  records  it 
will  be  noted  that  our  Special  Group  took  the  tests  two 
or  three  months  before  the  Control  Group. 

22.  Trabue  Language  Scales,  J  and  K.  These  two 
scales  were  given  to  the  Special  Group  March  13,  1917, 
and  to  the  Control  Group  March  14  to  17.  The  method 
was  like  that  with  Scales  B  and  C,  except  that  the  time- 
limit  was  five  minutes  instead  of  seven.  Trabue  gives 
no  standards  for  these  scales.  Comparison  within  our 
own  groups  gives  the  appended  records. 

Scores  for  Trabue  Scales  J  and  K,  Combined 

Poorest  Med.     Best  Poorest  Med.  Best 

Special   Fifth  8        13.17     20  Special    Sixth  6        15.50  21 

Control  Fifth  2  9.75      18  Control   Sixth  2        10.54  19 

The  differences  here  are  striking;  they  corroborate 
the  results  with  Scales  B  and  C  and  prove  conclusively 
that  the  kind  of  ability  needed  for  the  completion  test 
is  found  in  much  greater  quantity  among  the  selected 
pupils. 

23.  Completion  of  Number  Series  (TJiurstone).     In 


Mental  Tests  and  Outcomes  35 

February,  1917,  we  tried  with  the  Special  Group  and 
with  the  Control  Group  a  test,  devised  by  Dr.  Thurstone, 
composed  of  six  series  of  10  numbers  each;  each  series 
was  followed  by  four  blank  spaces  into  which  the  pupils 
were  to  write  numbers  that  would  continue  the  series 
on  the  principle  used  for  that  series  of  10  numbers.  A 
sample  easy  series  is : 

2    4    6    8    10    12    14    16    18    20 

A  sample  hard  series  is : 

2    5    9    15    19    22    26    32    36    39 

The  time-limit  was  3  minutes.  The  scoring  was  finally 
arranged  to  give  credit  roughly  in  proportion  to  the 
difficulty  of  each  series ;  thus,  the  correct  completions  of 
the  two  series  shown  above  were  scored  1  and  12,  re- 
spectively. 

No  results  will  be  shown  here  for  this  test.  It  was 
found  to  be  much  too  difficult  for  pupils  of  these  grades 
— nearly  one  third  of  the  pupils  in  the  Control  Group 
made  zero  scores,  as  did  four  pupils  in  the  Special  Fifth 
and  one  in  the  Special  Sixth. 

24.  Completion  of  Number  Series  (Coy).  Deeming 
the  idea  of  testing  generalization  by  the  use  of  number 
series  too  valuable  to  discard  without  another  attempt, 
I  suggested  the  trial  of  much  simpler  series  arranged  in 
gradually  increasing  difficulty.  Miss  Coy  worked  out 
such  a  test,  composed  of  13  number  series.  A  scheme  of 
credits,  ranging  from  1  point  to  5  points,  was  also  worked 
out  empirically.  The  test  was  given  to  both  the  groups 
in  March,  1917.  The  pupils  marked  the  point  reached 
by  them  at  the  end  of  3  minutes,  but  continued  the  test 
until  finished.  Record  was  made  of  the  total  time  of  each 
pupil.  The  total  credits  obtained  in  3  minutes  did  not 
serve  well  to  differentiate  the  groups ;  neither  did  the  at- 


36  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

tempt  to  figure  the  time  per  correct  solution.  We  finally 
used  simply  the  total  credits  for  the  entire  test,  disre- 
garding speed,  and  obtained  thereby  the  following : 

Scores  for  Number  Series  Completion  (Coy) 

Poorest  Med.     Best                                          Poorest  Med.  Best 

Special    Fifth          0        10.63      31                 Special    Sixth          0        15.50  31 

Control   Fifth          0          6.58     27                 Control   Sixth          0        10.50  27 

The  distributions  show  fewer  zero  scores  than  with 
the  Thurstone  form  of  the  test,  and  these  might,  we 
think,  have  been  further  reduced  by  some  sort  of  prelim- 
inary blackboard  explanation  or  opportunity  for  perhaps 
one  or  two  series  as  a  fore-exercise.  As  it  is,  the  test 
seems  likely  to  be  quite  useful.  Note  that  the  Special 
Group  clearly  surpasses  the  Control  Group,  and  that  the 
Special  Fifth  is  as  good  as  the  Control  Sixth,  also  that 
the  highest  scores  were  made  in  the  Special  Group.  Of 
the  four  zero  scores  made  in  the  Special  Group,  two  were 
by  pupils  who  failed  in  final  examinations  and  stood 
poorly  in  most  of  our  tests ;  similarly,  four  of  the  very 
high  scores  in  the  Control  Group  were  made  by  pupils 
that  other  tests  and  the  judgment  of  teachers  had  shown 
should  have  been  in  the  Special  Group. 

25.  Original  Analogies.  Following  the  idea  used  by 
Miss  L.  M.  Chassell,*  we  proposed  to  the  pupils  of  the 
Special  Group,  November  6,  1916,  after  they  had  all 
taken  the  regular  individual  analogies  test  already  de- 
scribed, that  they  should  try  their  hand  at  inventing 
analogies.  Fifteen  minutes  was  allowed.  The  test  was 
conducted  somewhat  informally;  pupils  that  had  diffi- 
culty were  given  some  individual  attention  at  times  dur- 
ing the  fifteen  minutes. 

Certain  difficulties  were  encountered  in  scoring  the 
results  and  we  have  no  data  for  comparison  with  our 

*Tests  for  Originality,  Jour,  of  Educ.  Psychol;  7:  June,  1916,  317-328. 


Mental  Tests  and  Outcomes     ,  37 

« 

Control  Group.  The  results- that  were  obtained  indicate 
that  further  experimentation  with  this  test  and  others 
like  it  would  be  worth  while.  One  point  of  interest  is 
the  very  high  correlation  between  this  test  and  the  Winch 
composition  test.  It  is  possible  that  the  making  of  orig- 
inal analogies  reveals  better  than  does  the  solving  of 
regular  analogies,  the  ability  to  handle  abstract  relation- 
ships of  the  verbal  variety. 

26.  Equivalent  Proverbs.  This  test  has  been  used 
by  several  psychologists,  among  them  Dr.  H.  A.  Kuger 
and  Dr.  W.  D.  Scott.  I  am  unable  to  say  who  originated 
it.  A  set  of  English  proverbs  is  printed  on  one.  half  of 
the  page;  a  set  of  English  translations  of  Arabian  or 
African  or  other  proverbs  that  present  the  same  ideas 
is  printed  on  the  other  half  of  the  page,  but  in  a  differ- 
ent order.  The  examinee  is  to  set  against  each  English 
proverb  the  number  of  the  foreign  proverb  that  is  equiv- 
alent to  it  in  meaning.  It  is  clear  that  the  test  demands 
the  appreciation  of  metaphorical  allusions.  In  a  way  it 
might  be  thought  of  as  a  condensed  form  of  the  'inter- 
pretation of  fables'  test. 

The  material  used  with  the  Special  Group  October  11 
was  known  as  Form  VI  and  that  given  December  4  as 
Form  I  and  Form  II.  These  three  sets  of  equivalent 
proverbs  were  developed  in  1916  by  members  of  the  Bu- 
reau of  Salesmanship  Research,  Pittsburgh,  Pa.,  who  were 
doing  research  work  in  mental  testing  under  my  direc- 
tion. No.  VI  is  made  up  of  13  pairs,  the  others  of  only 
8  pairs,  of  proverbs ;  VI  is  intrinsically  more  difficult  and 
ought  to  have  come  last  in  order  of  presentation.  Be- 
cause the  time  varied  so  much  we  tried  to  combine  speed 
and  accuracy  of  work  by  computing  the  average  time 
per  correct  answer,  though  the  plan  is  open  to  criticism 


38  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

with  this  particular  test.  The  tests  were  given  to  the 
Control  Group  between  December  14,  1916,  and  January 
12,  1917,  under  somewhat  altered  conditions  of  time 
allowance  and  method  of  printing  the  text  of  Form  VI. 
The  altered  conditions,  so  far  as  we  could  estimate,  did 
not  appreciably  favor  either  the  Special  or  the  Control 
Group.  From  the  median  performance,  which  is  fairer 
than  the  average  on  account  of  certain  very  low  scores,  it 
is  clear  that  this  test  serves  remarkably  well  to  differen- 
tiate the  gifted  pupils. 

Equivalent  Proverbs;  Time  per  Correct  Answer 

Poorest  Med.     Best  Poorest  Med.  Best 

Special    Fifth     190.0  132.4        40.5  Special    Sixth      177.0    72.9  41.7 

Control   Fifth     419.0  154.0        40.5  Control    Sixth     576.0  119.0  39.6 

27.  Reasoning  Tests,  III,  V  and  VI.  (Bonser).* 
These  tests  are  of  a  non-arithmetical  character  and  thus 
are  preferably  dealt  with  separate  from  the  Bonser  Tests 
I  and  II,  which  are  classed  with  our  educational  tests. 
They  comprise  various  forms,  such  as  completion  of  a 
sentence  to  make  sense,  crossing  out  the  one  of  two  words 
in  a  sentence  -that  makes  poor  sense,  checking  correct 
reasons,  valid  definitions,  etc.  Following  Bonser 's  meth- 
od, we  had  to  determine  our  own  time-limits,  with  the 
following  results: 


5th  , 

grade 

6th  grade 

Test  III  A 

124 

sec. 

124  sec. 

Test  HI  B 

195 

130 

Test  V  A,  B 

86 

70 

Test  V  C 

57 

35 

Test  V  D 

24 

24 

Test  VI 

90 

75 

The  tests  were  administered  to  the  Special  Group 
December  5-7,  1916,  and  to  the  Control  Group  mostly 
about  one  month  later. 


*F.  G.  Bonser.  The  Reasoning  Ability  of  Children  of  the  Fourth, 
Fifth  and  Sixth  School  Grades.  Teachers  College  Contrib.  to  Educ,  No. 
37,    1910. 


Mental  Tests  and  Outcomes  39 

The  results  show  that  while  a  few  very  poor  records 
were  made  in  the  Special  Group,  yet,  on  the  whole,  this 
combination  of  'reasoning'  tests  serves  excellently  well 
for  separating  the  Special  from  the  Control  Group ;  in 
fact,  the  Special  Fifth  is  better  in  reasoning  than  the 
Control  Sixth.  The  exceptionally  high  record  made  by 
one  pupil  in  the  Control  Fifth  represents  a  child  that 
was  later  on  transferred  to  the  Special  Fifth.  The  sum- 
mary of  scores  here  given  comprises  all  six  parts  of  these 
tests  taken  collectively. 

Bonser  Reasoning  Tests  III,   V  and   VI 

Poorest  Med.        Best  Poorest  Med.  Best 

Special   Fifth     27        43.5        76.5  Special   Sixth        31.5    55.0  95.0 

Control  Fifth        5        30.5        91.0  Control  Sixth        13.0    40.5  86.0 

28.  Inference  Test  (TJiurstone).  The  test  form  con- 
tains 32  arguments  in  syllogistic  form,  all  of  them  deal- 
ing with  the  stature  of  Smith,  Jones  and  Brown,  e.  g., 
"Smith  is  taller  than  Brown;  Jones  is  shorter  than 
Brown;  therefore  Brown  is  taller  than  Smith."  Each 
argument  is  to  be  marked  +  if  true,  -  if  false.  Seven 
minutes  was  allowed.  We  have  not  been  able  to  try 
different  methods  of  scoring  this  test,  Logically,  since 
the  examinee,  by  nearly  guessing,  has  a  one-to-one  chance 
of  marking  any  argument  correctly,  a  suitable  score 
would  appear  to  be  the  number  right  less  twice  the  num- 
ber wrong.  On  this  basis  scores  might  range  from  -64 
to  +32 ;  our  Special  Fifth  scores  did  range  from  2  to  29, 
median  8.5 ;  our  Special  Sixth  scores  from  -8  to  22, 
median  5.25.  Note  that  the  test  is  difficult ;  that  the  fifth 
grade  surpasses  the  sixth  (this  by  marking  fewer  argu- 
ments and  making  fewer  errors)  ;  that  one  pupil  makes 
the  remarkable  score  of  29  (Pupil  No.  1,  who  does  ex- 
ceptionally fine  work  in  all  reasoning  tests).    We  have 


40  Classes  tor  Gifted  Children 

no  data  for  comparison  with  other  elementary-school  or 
high-school  pupils. 

In  terms  of  number  right  the  scores  were:  for  the 
Special  Fifth,  median  13.5,  range  8  to  29 ;  for  the  Spe- 
cial Sixth,  median  13.5,  range  6  to  25. 

29.  Reasoning  Test  (Thur stone).  This  test  form 
contains  20  arguments,  more  varied  in  content  and  style 
than  those  of  the  preceding  test.  It  was  given  to  the 
Special  Group  December  14,  1916,  and  to  the  Control 
Group  February  7  and  8,  1917.  The  Special  Group 
worked  seven  minutes,  but  also  indicated  the  point 
reached  in  five  minutes.  The  Control  Group  worked  for 
five  minutes. 

When  we  scored  this  test  by  the  formula  R-2W  we 
found  an  anomalous  condition:  the  Special  Fifth  ex- 
celled the  Control  Fifth,  but  the  Special  Sixth  was  infe- 
rior to  the  Control  Sixth — this  despite  the  superiority 
of  the  Special  Group  in  other  tests  involving  abstract 
verbal  relationships,  like  Equivalent  Proverbs,  Bonser 
Reasoning  and  Analogies.  On  this  account  we  prevailed 
upon  Dr.  Thurstone  to  survey  our  data,  with  the  result 
that  scoring  by  giving  credit  to  right  answers  with  no 
penalty  for  wrong  answers  was  found  *bya  empirical  test- 
ing to  bring  this  test  into  line  with  the  other  reasoning 
tests  and  to  qualify  it  for  consideration  for  selecting 
gifted  children,  though  it  is  undoubtedly  very  difficult 
for  children  of  these  grades. 

Score   by    Rights   in  Reasoning    Test    (Thurstone) 

Poorest  Aver.    Best  Poorest  Aver.  Best 

Special    Fifth  5  9.66      15  Special    Sixth  8        11.00  14 

Control  Fifth  2  7.59      12  Control   Sixth  2  7.83  16 

30.  Hand  Test  (Thurstone).  The  printed  form  pre- 
sents a  series  of  49  drawings  of  a  hand  shown  in  all  sorts 


Mental  Tests  and  Outcomes  41 

of  positions.  Three  minutes  is  allowed  in  which  to 
indicate  for  as  many  hands  as  possible  whether  they  are 
right  or  left  hands.  The  score  is  the  number  of  rights 
minus  the  number  of  wrongs.  The  Special  Group  took 
the  test  December  15,  1916 ;  the  Control  Group  January 
12-15,  1917.  Our  records  show  a  preponderance  of  low 
scores  with  a  few  very  high  records.  The  distribution 
for  the  several  groups  is  virtually  the  same,  and  no  dif- 
ference can  be  detected  between  the  gifted  pupils  and  the 
others.  The  peculiar  ability  that  is  measured  is  appar- 
ently not  one  that  is  symptomatic  or  constitutive  of 
general  intelligence. 

31.  Spatial  Relations  Test  A.  (Thurstone).  This 
test  is  yet  another  of  those  designed  by  Dr.  Thurstone. 
It  is  difficult  to  explain  without  showing  the  copy  in 
detail.  It  was  difficult  to  explain  to  the  children  what 
was  to  be  done  with  the  copy  when  it  was  before  them. 
On  this  account  and  because  our  results  show  that  the 
test  has  little  relation  to  general  intelligence,  but  is  more 
akin  to  the  Flag  Test  and  the  Hand  Test,  we  shall  make 
no  attempt  to  enter  further  into  it  here. 

32.  Punched  Holes  Test  (Thurstone).  In  February, 
1917,  we  gave  to  both  Special  and  Control  Groups,  the 
Thurstone  Punched  Holes  Test.  This  has  a  certain  sim- 
ilarity to  the  paper-folding  test  of  the  Binet  series,  which 
is  placed  by  Terman  in  Year  XVIII.  The  test  sheet,  by 
drawings  and  verbal  description,  explains  to  the  exami- 
nee that  he  is  to  imagine  a  square  of  paper  folded  once 
along  its  diagonal  and  then  again  along  an  axis  at  right 
angles  to  the  first  fold ;  in  the  second  section  of  the  test, 
there  is  yet  another  fold.  The  examinee  then  has  to 
show  by  pencil  in  blank  squares  where  holes  -would  ap- 
pear in  the  paper  if  punched  through  at  certain  indi- 


42  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

cated  points  and  then  unfolded.  From  this  description 
it  will  perhaps  be  clear  that  the  test  seems  to  be  very 
decidedly  one  demanding  a  special  form  of  ability  to 
manipulate  objects  in  visual  or  visuo-kinesthetic  three- 
dimensional  space.  There  is  added,  however,  the  possi- 
bility of  working,  at  least  after  the  first  few  squares  are 
done,  by  means  of  a  generalized  principle,  and  it  may 
be  that  the  striking  results  we  have  obtained  depend  on 
that  aspect  of  the  test. 

Scores  in  Punched  Holes  Test 

Poorest  Med.  Best  Poorest  Med.  Best 

Special   Fifth          3          8.25  34                 Special   Sixth  2        12.25  36 

Control  Fifth          0          4.23  16                 Control   Sixth  0          5.30  29 

The  only  directions  given  were:  "Do  what  it  says 
to  do."  The  time-limit  was  set  at  10  minutes,  which 
turned  out  to  be  too  short  for  any  of  our  pupils  to 
finish.  In  the  absence  of  scoring  instructions,  we  have 
simply  given  one  credit  for  each  hole  correctly  placed, 
with  no  deductions  for  errors.  The  results  are  sufficient- 
ly interesting  to  warrant  a  reproduction  of  the  distribu- 
tion areas  for  the  two  grades;  it  will  be  noted  thereon 
that  there  are  a  few  excellent  records  in  which  the  mem- 
bers of  the  Special  Group  appear  far  more  frequently 
than  those  of  the  Control  Group.  In  both  grades  the 
averages  and  medians  for  the  Special  Group  are  over 
twice  as  good  as  those  for  the  Control  Group. 

33.  Flag  Test  (TJiurstone).  This  is  another  of  the 
tests  designed  by  Dr.  Thurstone  to  bring  out  capacity 
to  handle  spatial  relations.  It  is  a  mimeographed  sheet 
bearing  typewritten  directions  and  21  simple  drawings 
of  pairs  of  flags.  The  examinee  is  to  mark  with  a  plus, 
pairs  that  show  the  same  face  of  the  flag,  with  a  minus, 
pairs  that  show  different  faces.  (It  should  be  under- 
stood that  the  area  occupied  by  the  stars  in  the  United 


Mental  Tests  and  Outcomes 


43 


SCORE 


C 

36 
34 

30 
IS 
tb 
24 
Zl 
ZO 
18 
lb 

14 

12 

10 

8 

6 

4 
Z 

1 

T~ 

r^ 

1 

'           1 

1 

1 

1 

i 

11     20     18     16     14     12     10     8 
CONTROL   CLASSES 


4      6       8      10     II      14      16      IV 

SPECIAL   CLASSES 


FIG.  I. 


Comparison  of  Scores  of  Special  and  of  Control  Classes  in  the 
Punched  Holes  Test. 

Here  in  Fig.  I,  since  the  Special  Classes  actually  contained  30 
pupils  and  the  Control  Classes  143  pupils,  the  number  of  cases  on 
the  right-hand  side  of  the  diagram  has  been  multiplied  by  five  to  pro- 
duce an  approximate  equivalence  in  the  two  distributions.  It  is  of 
special  interest  to  note  that  several  of  the  high  scores  here  assigned 
to  members  of  the  Control  Group  were  obtained  by  pupils  who  were 
shown  to  be  gifted.  Thus  the  score  marked  A  was  made  by  Pupil  G-38 
who  was  picked  by  the  other  mental  tests  and  by  her  teacher  as  wrongly 
retained  in  the  Control  Group;  the  score  marked  B  was  made  by  Pupil 
F-34,  whose  I.Q.  is  135  and  who  was  later  transferred  to  the  Gifted 
Class;  the  score  marked  0  was  obtained  by  Pupil  F-21,  who  was  ranked 
both  by  the  other  tests  and  by  the  teacher  as  a  possible  candidate  for 
the  Gifted  Class;  and  the  score  marked  D  was  obtained  by  Pupil  Y-35, 
whose  I.Q.  is  167  and  who  was  later  transferred  to  the  Special  Class.  (See 
Chapter  VII  for  a  discussion  of  these  cases.) 

On  the  other  hand,  of  the  scores  below  9  points  here  assigned  to 
pupils  in  the  Special  Class  five  (or  25  'squares'  on  the  diagram)  were 
obtained  by  pupils  shown  by  the  other  mental  tests  to  have  been  wrongly 
included  in  the  Special  Class.  'If  these  corrections  are  made,  the  reader 
will  observe,  the  diagnostic  merit  of  the  Punched  Holes  test  becomes  still 
more  strikingly  evident. 


44  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

States  flag  is  demarcated  by  a  small  rectangle  within  the 
large,  also  that  the  flags  were  shown  in  a  position  90  or 
180  degrees  from  normal.)  This  test  was  administered, 
after  appropriate  blackboard  explanations,  to  the  Special 
Group  and  to  the  Control  Group,  in  February,  1917.  The 
time-limit  of  5  minutes  proved  too  long  for  about  one 
seventh  of  the  pupils.  The  scoring  was  rights  minus 
twice  the  wrongs.  The  results  are  ambiguous  for  the 
placing  of  this  test.  In  the  5th  grades  the  Special  Group 
is  clearly  superior  to  the  Control  Group,  whether  we 
take  averages  or  medians.  In  the  6th  grade  the  Special 
Group  shows  the  higher  average,  but  the  Control  Group 
the  higher  median  (with  six  perfect  scores) .  The  figures 
follow : 

Scores  in  Flag  Test    (Thurstone) 

Poorest  Med.     Av.  Best  Poorest  Med.  Av.  Best 

Special    Fifth  -21      15.12      6.87      21      Special    Sixth  -16     4.50  5.73      21 

Control  Fifth  -30     -3.37  -3.29      21      Control  Sixth  -27      6.50  3.68      21 

34.  Steacy  Drawing  Construction  Test,  1-40.  This 
test  was  forwarded  by  its  originator*  with  a  few  direc- 
tions but  not  sufficient  to  make  us  sure  that  we  followed 
his  methods.  "We  had  also  to  devise  our  own  scoring. 
The  general  scheme  is  to  place  before  the  examinee  a 
set  of  20  drawings,  like  so  many  small  and  quite  simple 
units  in  a  geometrical  linoleum  design  and  likewise  an- 
other set  of  20  drawings  which  reproduce  only  the  upper 
left-hand  quarter  of  the  first  20  designs.  The  order  on 
the  two  sheets  differs ;  the  second  drawings  are  num- 
bered, and  the  examinee  is  to  find  out  which  of  the  com- 
pleted designs  is  made  from  the  Quarter-section  No.  1, 
No.  2,  etc.,  and  number  them  accordingly.  After  a  pre- 
liminary blackboard  explanation,  we  permitted  the  pu- 


*Mr.  F.  W.  Steacy,  who  was  using  it  for  certain  investigations  at 
Columbia  University,  1916-17.  See  his  Interrelations  of  Mental  Abilities 
(in  press). 


Mental  Tests  and  Outcomes  45 

pils  to  use  all  the  time  they  needed,  but  papers  were  sub- 
mitted as  soon  as  finished,  the  time  was  noted,  and  they 
were  scored  by  dividing  the  time  into  the  total  number  of 
correct  numberings.  The  same  process  was  then  repeat- 
ed with  a  second  set  of  drawings  and  quarter-sections, 
numbered  21  to  40.  The  median  scores  (seconds  per 
correct  solution)  run:  Special  Fifth  37.38,  Control  Fifth 
45.75;  Special  Sixth  33.58,  Control  Sixth  33.83.  One 
of  the  highest  scores  is  made  by  a  boy  in  the  Control 
Group  that  had  been  under  study  for  his  unusual  ability 
in  drawing.  However,  the  test  clearly  has  little  to  rec- 
ommend it  for  measuring  general  intelligence. 

35.  Steacy  Drawing  Construction  Test,  41-100.  This 
differs  from  the  preceding  test  in  that  the  examinee  is 
asked  to  draw  a  complete  design  from  the  upper  left- 
hand  quarter  of  a  design  which  is  shown  as  a  pattern. 
The  designs  use  straight  lines  only.  They  are  to  be 
drawn  on  backgrounds  provided  in  the  mimeographed 
test  sheet.  The  background  for  each  design  is  a  square 
subdivided  into  16  squares,  all  indicated  by  light  dotted 
lines.  The  test  demanded  careful  preliminary  explana- 
tion with  blackboard  demonstrations.  To  accomplish  the 
60  designs  took  about  three  30-minute  periods — obviously 
too  long  for  classroom  testing.  Thirty  patterns  would 
be  quite  sufficient.  We  scored  each  pupil  m  terms  of 
time  in  minutes  per  correct  design,  and  obtained  the 
following  results. 

Steacy   Drawings,    41-100.     Minutes   per    Correct   Drawing 

Poorest  Median     Best                               Poorest  Median  Best 

Special  Fifth       4.48        1.146      0.606      Special  Sixth        1.94     1.046  0.669 

Control  Fifth    60.00        1.701      0.588      Control  Sixth    15.00       1.229  0.655 

These  results  show  that  especially  in  the  5th  grade 
the  test  has  some  diagnostic  value.    Examination  of  in- 


46  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

dividual  records  indicates  that  a  child  with  mediocre 
general  intelligence  may  get  a  good  score  if  he  has  some 
talent  for  drawing  and  skill  in  the  use  of  his  pencil; 
on  the  other  hand,  pupils  with  superior  general  intelli- 
gence are  able  to  make  good  scores,  even  when  they  ex- 
hibit no  special  talent  in  drawing.  This  part  of  the 
Steacy  test  is  better  as  a  measure  of  intelligence  than 
the  first  part,  if  our  data  are  to  be  held  reliable. 


Chapter  IV 

THE  EDUCATIONAL  TESTS  AND  THEIR 
OUTCOMES 

The  tests  which  we  have  listed  as  primarily  educa- 
tional rather  than  mental  tests  have  to  do  with  spelling, 
writing,  drawing,  arithmetic,  reading  and  composition.* 
They  will  be  discussed  in  the  following  order  (continu- 
ing the  numbering  from  the  preceding  chapter)  : 

36.  Spelling  (Buckingham  test) 

37.  Spelling  (Ayres  tests) 

38.  Handwriting 

39.  Drawing  (church  and  snowball  fight) 

40.  Drawing  (horse) 

41.  Drawing  (toy  wagon) 

42.  Drawing  (esthetic  appreciation  test) 

43.  Arithmetic  (constant  increment  test) 

44.  Arithmetic  (error-checking  test) 

45.  Arithmetic  (practise  test  in  multiplication) 

46.  Arithmetic  (Courtis,  Series  A  and  B) 

47.  Arithmetic  (Woody  tests,  Series  A) 

48.  Arithmetic  (Woody-McCall  tests,  Series  B,  I  and 

49.  Arithmetic  (Bonser  Reasoning  tests,  I  and  II) 

50.  Reading  (Thorndike  visual  vocabulary  test) 

51.  Reading  (N.  Y.  Ventilation  Commission  vocabu- 

lary test) 

52.  Reading  (Thorndike  scale  alpha) 

53.  Reading  (Thorndike  scale  alpha  2,  Part  II) 

54.  Composition  (punctuation  test) 

55.  Composition  (Winch  tests) 

*For  references  to  all  these  and  many  other  educational  tests,  to- 
gether with  a  discussion  of  methods,  standards  and  results  in  the  measure- 
ment of  classroom  performance,  the  reader  is  referred  especially  to  The 
Seventeenth  Yearbook  of  the  National  Society  for  the  Study  of  Education, 
Part  II,  1918,  entitled  "The  Measurement  of  Educational  Products,"  which 
presents  an  authoritative  survey  of  this  field,  prepared  by  the  National 
Association  of  Directors  of  Educational  Research.  Another  convenient 
reference  is  W.  S.  Monroe,  J.  0.  DeVoss  and  P.  J.  Kelly.  Educational 
Tests  and  Measurements.     Boston,  1917. 


48  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

36.  Buckingham  Spelling  Test.  This  test  comprises 
about  20  sentences  presented  as  an  exercise  in  dictation, 
in  which  a  certain  50  words  are  scored  for  spelling  and 
the  weights  to  be  given  for  misspelling  each  word  ascer- 
tained by  reference  to  the  author's  tables.*  This  method 
of  scoring  we  feel  to  be  too  complex,  when  handled  to 
furnish  data  for  the  comparison  of  individuals,  to  pay 
for  the  labor  expended.  We  have  found,  however,  that 
our  Special  Fifth  ranks  22  per  cent,  above  the  fifth-grade 
performance  specified  by  Buckingham  and  our  Special 
Sixth,  17  per  cent.,  above  his  specifications  for  that  grade. 
The  Special  Fifth  is  about  8  per  cent,  below  the  Special 
Sixth. 

37.  Ayres  Spelling  Test.  On  three  different  days 
in  October  our  Special  Classes  were  given  Ayres'  Lists 
N,  R,  and  U.  The  average  scores  made  by  both  grades 
on  all  these  lists  were  distinctly  above  the  average  set 
by  Ayres  for  their  grades.    Roughly,  the  grades  attained 

Average  Scores  in  Ayres  Spelling  Tests 

List  N  List  R  List  U 

Special   Fifth  91.6  72.4  55.9 

Ayres    Standard  88.0  66.0  42.0 

Special   Sixth  97.1  91.3  75.3 

Ayres   Standard  94.0  79.0  58.0 

are  nearer  the  standard  of  the  next  grade  above  than 
the  normal  standard;  in  fact,  with  List  U  the  Special 
Sixth  score  of  75.3  is  far  superior  to  the  66  which  is 
standard  for  seventh  grades.  The  results,  therefore,  con- 
firm those  of  the  Buckingham  test. 

38.  Handwriting.  In  October  the  pupils  were  asked 
to  copy  a  paragraph  from  a  simple  story,  with  no  sug- 
gestion that  quality  of  writing  was  to  be  graded.    Later 


*B.  R.  Buckingham.  Spelling  ability;  its  measurement  and  distribu- 
tion, Teachers  College  Contributions  to  Education,  1913.  See  especially 
p.  51. 


Educational  Tests  and  Outcomes  49 

each  sample  was  graded  by  each  of  sixteen  students  in  my 
class  in  educational  measurement,  both  by  the  Thorndike 
and  by  the  Ayres  scale.  The  ranks  obtained  by  the  two 
scales  are  closely  similar  in  most  cases.  The  averages 
for  the  two  grades  are  not  much  different.  By  the  Thorn  - 
dike  scale  the  averages  are:  Special  Fifth,  10,  Special 
Sixth,  10.5;  by  the  Ayres  scale:  Special  Fifth,  48.6, 
Special  Sixth,  50.8.  These  scores  are  considerably  below 
the  medians  reported  by  Freeman  for  56  cities,  but  they 
are  above  Starch's  standard  and  above  the  scores  re- 
ported from  Cleveland.*  On  the  whole,  the  handwriting 
is  certainly  not  of  superior  quality,  but  considering  the 
fact  that  no  instructions  for  good  quality  were  given 
and  that  the  samples  were  secured  in  October,  it  is  not 
at  all  bad. 

39.  Drawing  a  Church  and  a  Snowball  Fight.  The 
pupils  in  the  Special  Class  were  given  20  minutes  to 
draw  a  church.  On  another  day  they  were  given  20 
minutes  to  draw  a  snowball  fight.  Nineteen  college  stu- 
dents in  the  class  previously  mentioned  ranked  each  set 
of  drawings  in  order  of  merit.  Later  the  same  students 
graded  the  first  set  of  drawings  with  the  aid  of  the 
Thorndike  drawing  scale.  In  the  latter  case  it  appeared 
that  the  sixth  grade  did  but  little  better  than  the  fifth 
grade,  and  the  best  score  was  obtained  by  a  fifth-grade 
pupil.  The  Thorndike  scale  presented  numerous  diffi- 
culties that  could  probably  be  overcome  by  rearrange- 
ment of  its  contents. 

40.  Drawing  a  Horse.  The  drawings  of  the  church 
and  of  the  snowball  fight  were  useful  in  permitting  the 
pupils  to  show  their  skill  in  composition  (arrangement 

*For  these  and  other  standards,  see  the  Seventeenth  Yearbook,  Part  II, 
just  referred  to,  p.  83. 


50  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

of  details)  and  perspective,  but  on  that  account  they 
made  rating  difficult.  To  secure  a  subject  that  would  be 
familiar  to  all  and  present  little  chance  for  divergence 
in  cleverness  of  composition  (as  distinct  from  good  draw- 
ing), we  asked  each  pupil  on  January  4,  1917,  to  draw 
a  horse  from  memory.  Five  minutes  was  allowed,  with 
a  warning  at  the  end  of  the  third  minute.  The  draw- 
ings from  both  Special  and  Control  Groups  were  graded 
by  four  University  students  of  education*  with  the  aid 
of  the  Thorndike  drawing  scale,  t  The  score  given  each 
pupil  was  the  average  of  the  ratings  by  these  four  stu- 
dents. The  minimal,  median,  and  maximal  ratings  are 
shown  herewith.    It  is  seen  that  there  is  no  clear  supe- 

D rawing   a    Horse   from   Memory 

Min.        Med.        Max.                                     Min.  Med.  Max. 

Special    Fifth  2.20        5.93        11.18          Special    Sixth   3.18  4.28  11.38 

Control   Fifth  2.00        5.68          9.28          Control   Sixth   1.80  5.68  11.93 

riority  of  either  grade  or  of  either  group  in  drawing  a 
horse. 

41.  Drawing  a  Toy  Wagon  (from  the  object).  On 
the  same  date,  January  4th,  the  pupils  of  both  groups 
were  allowed  five  minutes  to  draw  from  the  object  a 
small,  two-wheeled,  wooden  toy  wagon.  The  drawings 
were  graded  by  the  same  persons  and  by  the  same  meth- 
ods as  those  of  the  horse.  The  results  show  that  the 
drawings  of  the  wagon  tend  to  grade  higher  than  those 

Drawing  a  Wagon  from  the  Object 

Min.        Med.        Max.                                     Min.  Med.  Max. 

Special    Fifth  4.13         6.78         9.60          Special    Sixth  4.70  6.78  11.28 

Control   Fifth   1.60         6.33       11.35          Control  Sixth  2.90  6.58  11.55 


*Misses  Harriett  Berninger,  Dora  Keen,  Frances  Mapel  and  Margaret 
Doherty. 

tThis  scale  was  the  best  available  at  the  time.  The  difficulty  is 
evident  enough — to  decide  whether  a  given  drawing  of  a  horse  was  better 
or  poorer  than  a  drawing  of  a  snow  fort  or  a  house  or  some  other  object. 
The  material  we  accumulated  might,  I  believe,  be  itself  arranged  now  into 
a  fairly  good  scale  for  drawing  from  memory.  The  idea  would  be  to  use 
it  by  having  all  the  pupils  tested  draw  a  horse,  within  a  five-minute  limit. 


Educational  Tests  and  Outcomes  51 

of  the  horse,  that  in  both  grades  the  best  drawing  is  by 
a  member  of  the  Control  Group,  but  that,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  lowest  scores  were  made  by  members  of  the 
•Control  Group.  The  drawing  supervisor  of  the  Leal 
School  states  that  there  are  five  or  six  pupils  in  the  Con- 
trol Group  whose  skill  in  drawing  is  exceptional,  but 
none  in  the  Special  Group.  In  the  light  of  this  the  prev- 
alence of  a  number  of  low  scores  in  the  Control  Group 
and  their  lower  averages  in  this  test  suggests  that  per- 
haps drawing  the  wagon  demands  a  certain  knowledge 
of  perspective  that  drawing  the  horse  does  not  and  that 
children  of  inferior  intelligence  acquire  this  knowledge 
of  perspective  drawing  slowly  if  at  all.  If  this  be  true, 
possibly  the  drawing  of  the  horse  may  be  better  fitted 
than  the  drawing  of  the  wagon  to  unearth  real  differ- 
ences in  drawing  talent,  uncomplicated  by  training  and 
informational  modification.*  In  any  event,  there  would 
seem  to  be  no  doubt  that  drawing  is  not  a  serviceable 
index  of  intelligence  for  the  purpose  of  sifting  gifted 
from  average  pupils,  t 

42.  Esthetic  Appreciation  Test  (Thorndike-Manuel). 
In  further  study  of  the  talent  for  drawing  in  these  pu- 
pils Dr.  Manuel  gave  to  the  Special  Group  a  test  of 
esthetic  appreciation  which  he  arranged  by  modification 
of  certain  plans  proposed  by  Thorndike.t  There  were 
presented  five  series  of  forms — two  of  rectangles,  two  of 
crosses,  and  one  of  ladder-like  designs.  The  pupils  were 
to  mark  the  members  of  each  series  in  order  of  attrac- 


*Some  with  whom  I  have  debated  this  point  are  of  the  impression  that 
children  who  have  a  true  natural  talent  for  drawing  see  objects  and  draw 
them  in  perspective  without  any  training. 

tThis  is  not  to  deny,  of  course,  what  we  have  said  elsewhere  in  this 
report,  that  the  attainment  of  the  highest  achievements  in  this  field  demand 
that  the  innate  talent  for  drawing  be  supplemented  by  a  good,  if  not  a 
superior  degree  of  general  intelligence. 

JTests  of  esthetic  appreciation.  Jour  of  Educ.  Psych.  7:  1916, 
509-522. 


52  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

tiveness  and  were  scored  by  amount  of  deviation  from 
the  order  determined  by  competent  judges  of  beauty  of 
proportion.  The  results  leave  the  investigator  in  doubt 
as  to  the  reliability  and  usefulness  of  the  test,  even  within 
its  assigned  province. 

43.  Constant  Increment  Test*  A  test  that  might 
be  deemed  an  arithmetical  test  is  that  of  adding  8  to  a 
series  of  two-place  numbers.  This  was  given  to  our  Spe- 
cial Group  in  December,  1916,  but  was  not  tried  with 
the  Control  Group.  The  pupils  were  to  write  their  ad- 
ditions against  each  number,  continuing  for  10  minutes 
and  marking  their  place  each  minute  as  directed  by 
the  experimenter.  The  most  striking  results  are  the  wide 
range  of  performance  and  the  decided  difference  be- 
tween the  two  Special  Grades,  as  the  tabular  statement 
makes  evident.  Miss  Coy,  who  conducted  the  test,  ques- 
tions whether  it  is  of  enough  value  for  the  time  required 
to  work  up  the  results,  even  when  the  pupils  correct  the 
papers  as  the  teacher  reads  off  the  correct  sums. 

Constant  Increment  Test 

Attempts  Rights 

Poorest     Aver.     Best  Poorest     Aver.     Best 

Special  Fifth                                      68          102.3      146  66           99.0        145 

Special  Sixth                                    101          144.3     200  96         139.6        193 

44.  Error-Checking  Test  (Thurstone).  This  test 
had  been  used  by  its  originator  at  the  Carnegie  Institute 
of  Technology.  In  it  the  pupils  were  supplied  with  a 
printed  sheet  containing  five  long  columns  of  simple 
arithmetical  combinations  (additions  and  subtractions) 
wherein  some  of  the  printed  answers  were  wrong,  e.  g., 
11  -  7=4 ;  2  +  13=16.  The  pupils  worked  4.5  minutes 
checking  wrong  answers  only,  and  were  scored  1  for 
each  correct  checking,  minus  1  for  each  wrong  checking. 


*See   R.    S.    Woodworth    and    F.    L.    Wells.      Association    tests.      Psy- 
chological Monographs,  No.  57,  1911. 


Educational  Tests  and  Outcomes  53 

Wc  possess  no  data  for  comparison.  The  scores  in  terms 
of  minimum,  median  and  maximum  were  for  the  Special 
Fifth,  21,  28.5,  48 ;  for  the  Special  Sixth,  21,  37.7,  51. 

45.  Practice  Test  in  Multiplication.  On  February 
23,  1917,  all  groups  were  given  Sheet  16  of  Thompson's 
Minimum  Essentials  as  an  initial  test  in  speed  and  ac- 
curacy of  multiplying  combinations  that  are  not  in  usual 
tables  (up  to  the  12 's)  and  that  have  products  less  than 
100.  This  sheet  contains  162  examples,  like  3  X  13=, 
15  X  2  =,  etc.  The  time  taken  by  each  pupil  to  finish 
was  recorded  by  stop-watch,  in  seconds,  and  was  divided 
by  per  cent,  of  products  correct,  to  give  the  final  measure 
of  efficiency. 

From  Monday,  February  27th,  to  Friday,  March  9th, 
that  is,  for  10  school  days,  the  pupils  (except  in  Control 
Class  F)  were  practised  with  Sheet  15  for  10  minutes 
daily.  (This  sheet  is  similar  to  Sheet  16,  but  is  printed 
on  two  sides  and  contains  more  combinations.)  They 
then  exchanged  papers  and  corrected  them  by  checking 
while  the  teachers  read  the  proper  answers.  To  main- 
tain interest  each  pupil  was  told  his  score  of  the  day 
before  (in  this  case  the  score  was  the  number  of  cor- 
rect products  written  in  10  minutes). 

On  Monday,  March  12th,  all  took  the  same  test  used 
at  the  start  (that  with  Sheet  16)  which  was  adminis- 
tered and  scored  as  in  the  initial  test. 

We  have,  then,  data  for  the  Initial  Test,  the  Practise 
Period  and  the  Final  Test  (after  100  minutes'  practise). 

A  study  of  the  records  of  the  initial  and  final  tests 
in  multiplication  shows  that  the  Special  Group  excels 
the  Control  Group  in  ability  to  profit  by  practise.  There 
is  little  difference  between  the  two  groups  when  the  test 
is  started,  but  after  the  period  of  practise  the  superiority 


54  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

of  the  Special  Group  becomes  evident ;  in  fact,  two  weeks 
of  practise  of  10  minutes  a  day  have  brought  the  Special 
Fifth  up  to  the  level  of  the  Control  Sixth.  Two  sug- 
gestions are  obvious;  first,  a  test  of  learning  might  be 
especially  desirable  in  differentiating  gifted  from  aver- 

Scores  in  Multiplication  Tests   (Thompson's  Sheet  16) 
(Time  in  seconds  divided  by  per  cent,  of  correct  products) 

Initial  Test  Final  Test 

Poorest  Med.      Best  Poorest  Med.      Best 

Special    Fifth        13.5    10.50        7.3  Special    Fifth  7.92    5.14      3.19 

Control   Fifth        18.0    10.15        5.0  Control   Fifth  9.80    6.35       3.29 


Special   Sixth 

8.9 

7.00 

4.2 

Special    Sixth 

5.48    3.32 

2.16 

Control  Sixth 

16.0 

7.35 

4.5 

Control  Sixth 

9.60     5.08 

2.60 

age  pupils ;  second,  the  amount  of  drill  needed  by  gifted 
pupils  to  attain  a  given  proficiency  is  measurably  less 
than  that  needed  by  average  and  dull  pupils. 

46.  Courtis  Arithmetic  Tests,  Series  A  and  B.  We 
gave  these  tests  to  the  Special  Group  on  six  different  days 
in  October  and  in  the  following  order :  Series  B,  Form 
2,  Tests  1,  2,  3,  4;  Series  A,  Form  3,  Tests  2,  3,  5,  4,  6, 
7,  1,  8.  We  followed  the  Courtis  directions  and  time- 
limits*  but  modified  the  method  of  recording  results  in 
some  respects  to  facilitate  individual  comparisons. 

The  results  are  presented  in  the  form  of  class  aver- 
ages (here  more  significant  than  medians)  for  Series  B, 
compared  with  a  number  of  proposed  standards,  t  It 
is  evident  that  our  Special  Fifth  ought  to  be  compared 
with  the  fourth-grade  and  our  Special  Sixth  with  the 
fifth-grade  standards.  When  this  is  done,  our  Special 
Fifth  is  found  to  be  inferior  to  June  standards  for  speed 
in  the  fourth  grade,  except  in  division.  But  our  Special 
Sixth  stands  out  very  well.     Save  in  addition,  where  it 


*S.  A.  Courtis      A  Manual  of  Instructions  for  Giving  and  Scoring  the 
Courtis  Standard  Testa. 

tThese    have    been    drawn    from    Monroe,    DeVoss    and    Kelly,    Table 
III,  page  40. 


Educational  Tests  and  Outcomes  55 

Courtis  Arithmetic  Tests;  Series  B  Speed   (Attempts) 

(October   class  average  for  the   Special  Classes   compared   with  three  June 
standards) 


Addition 

Subtraction 

Grade 

Special 

Standards 

Grade 

Special          Standards 

Class 

1           2 

3 

Class          1 

2 

3 

IV 



7.4        6.0 

8.0 

IV 

7.4 

7.0 

7.0 

V 

6.47 

8.6        8.0 

9.0 

V 

6.5        9.0 

9.0 

9.0 

VI 

8.13 

9.8      10.0 

10.0 

VI 

10.0      10.3 

11.0 

10.0 

VII 



10.9      11.0 

11.0 

VII 

11.6 

12.0 

11.0 

Multiplication 

Division 

IV 



6.2        6.0 

6.0 

IV 

4.6 

4.0 

4.0 

V 

5.5 

7.5        8.0 

7.0 

V 

4.6        6.1 

6.0 

6.0 

VI 

8.8 

9.1        9.0 

9.0 

VI 

9.5        8.2 

8.0 

8.0 

VII 



10.2      10.0 

10.0 

VII 

9.6 

10.0 

10.0 

Standard  1  is  based  on  median  scores  from  many  thousand  individ- 
uals tested  in  May  or  June;  Standard  2  is  that  proposed  by  Courtis  on  the 
basis  of  three  years'  use  of  the  tests;  Standard  3  is  the  median  scores 
obtained  in  three  years'  use  at  Boston. 

averages  certainly  no  better  than  a  fifth  grade  in  June,  it 
surpasses  the  fifth-grade  standard,  and  it  does  remark- 
ably finely  in  division  (almost  a  seventh-grade  June 
score). 

In  accuracy  the  scores  of  the  Special  Fifth  are  40, 
77,  64  and  83  per  cent,  and  those  of  the  Special  Sixth  are 
62,  87,  76,  and  93  per  cent.,  respectively,  for  the  four 
operations.  Comparison  with  the  'General'  medians  of 
Courtis  and  the  Boston  standards  for  fourth  grades  in 
June  shows  that  in  accuracy  the  Special  Fifth  is  very 
low  in  addition,  somewhat  low  in  subtraction,  about  nor- 
mal in  multiplication  and  remarkably  good  in  division 
(83  vs.  57  or  60  per  cent.).  Similar  comparison  with  the 
standards  for  fifth  grades  in  June  shows  our  Special 
Sixth  to  have  been  in  October  inferior  in  addition,  above 
expectations  in  subtraction  and  multiplication  and  re- 
markably good  in  division.  Since  we  unfortunately  did 
not  apply  these  tests  to  our  Control  Group,  we  have  no 
way  of  knowing  whether  the  selected  pupils  surpassed 
them  or  not.  It  would  seem  possible  that  the  Leal  School 
teachers  had  been  neglecting  drill  in  addition  and  over- 


56  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

emphasizing  drill  in  division.  And  it  may  be  that  the 
superiority  of  gifted  children  comes  out  more  clearly  in 
the  more  difficult  process  of  division. 

47.  Woody  Arithmetic  Tests,  Series  A*  These  were 
given  to  the  Special  Group  between  November  7  and  14, 
1916,  and  the  directions  laid  down  by  the  author  were 
closely  followed.  Although  many  of  our  pupils  finished 
before  time  was  called,  no  credit  was  given  them  in  the 
scoring,  which  was  at  first  worked  out  precisely  accord- 
ing to  directions.     The  'class-scores'  thus  obtained  by 

Scores  in  the  Woody  Arithmetic  Tests,  Series  A 

Addition          Subtraction  Multiplication        Division 

Special  Fifth           8.18    (6)              6.91    (6.5)  6.37    (5.5)  6.14    (6.5) 

Special  Sixth           8.39    (6.5)           7.55    (8)  7.39    (7)  7.34    (8) 

Woody 's  method  may  be  interpreted  approximately  in 
terms  of  grades  as  indicated  by  the  figures  in  the  paren- 
theses ;  that  is,  our  Special  Fifth  grade  is  approximately 
equal  to  the  expected  performance  of  the  sixth  grade  in 
addition,  is  half  way  between  the  sixth  and  the  seventh 
grades  in  subtraction,  etc.  The  scores  of  our  Special 
Fifth  in  multiplication  and  division  were  lowered  by 
the  circumstances  that  they  had  just  entered  their  work 
with  fractions  and  had  at  the  time  done  but  little  in 
multiplying  and  dividing  fractions;  so  that  they  failed 
when  they  encountered  these  problems  in  the  test  blanks. 
Two  comments  are  in  order  here.  In  the  first  place, 
we  have  found  that  a  simpler  method  of  scoring  (in 
terms  of  number  of  problems  solved  correctly)  yields 
us  information  almost  identical  with  the  very  complex 
and  tedious  method  prescribed  by  Woody;  we  are  sure 
the  time  expended  in  following  his  scoring  directions 
can  be  better  employed.     This  is  true  both  for  scoring 


*Clifford  Woody.     Measurements  of  Some  Achievements  in  Arithmetic. 
New  York,  63  pp. 


Educational  Tests  and  Outcomes  57 

the  work  of  the  individual  pupil  and  of  the  class  as  a 
whole. 

In  the  second  place,  there  is  some  discrepancy  be- 
tween these  results  and  those  already  reported  for  the 
Courtis  tests,  according  to  which  our  Special  Group  was 
not  far  ahead  of  the  standard  performance  in  any  opera- 
tion save  division  and  the  poorest  work  was  in  addition. 
Here,  one  month  later,  our  Group  is  from  a  half  a  year  to 
two  years  advanced.  Partly,  the  discrepancy  is  due  to 
comparing  tests  made  very  soon  after  the  summer  vaca- 
tion with  tests  made  some  six  or  seven  weeks  after  in- 
struction had  been  in  progress.  Perhaps  it  may  be  due 
in  some  further  part  to  the  differences  between  the  two 
tests;  the  Courtis  problems  are  longer  than  the  Woody 
problems ;  a  single  error  in  the  former  nullifies  perhaps 
a  minute's  work,  in  the  latter  perhaps  the  work  of  15 
or  20  seconds.  Again,  the  fact  that  the  Woody  problems 
are  graded  in  difficulty  probably  encourages  the  pupil. 
Finally,  the  discrepancy  may  be  due  in  some  part  to 
rapid  progress  made  by  the  pupils  after  their  segrega- 
tion into  a  smaller  group  where  their  short-comings  could 
be  noted. 

48.  Woody-McCall  Mixed  Fundamentals,  Series  B, 
I  and  II.  These  modifications*  by  McCall  of  Woody 's 
Series  B  were  given  to  the  Special  Group  February  11 
and  12,  1917,  Sheet  I  one  day  and  Sheet  II  the  next. 
The  papers  were  collected  at  the  end  of  20  minutes,  and 
pupils  were  credited  if  they  finished  before  then.  The 
scoring  followed  the  strict  method  indicated  above,  but 
supplementary  scores  were  computed  by  dividing  the 
time  by  the  accuracy  score — this  in  order  to  give  some 


*The  modification  compels  the  pupil  to  vary  the  kind   of   arithmetical 
operation  to  be  used  from  problem  to  problem. 


58  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

weight  to  speed  of  work.  The  same  sheets  were  given  to 
the  Control  Group  about  10  days  earlier.  The  average 
results  are  shown  by  groups  for  both  sheets  and  for  both 
methods  of  scoring. 

Scores  in    Woody-McCall   Arithmetic   Tests,   Series  B,   Sheet   I 

A.  Average   Number    Done   Correctly 

Special  Fifth   26.34  Special   Sixth   28.60 

Control  Fifth   23.31  Control   Sixth   24.10 

B.  Average  Time  per  Correct  Solution 

Special   Fifth  41.1  Special   Sixth  31.7 

Control  Fifth  51.6  Control   Sixth  46.0 
Scores  in   Woody-McCall  Arithmetic   Tests,  Series  B,  Sheet  II 

A.  Average   Number    Done  Correctly 

Special  Fifth   27.60  Special   Sixth   29.26 

Control  Fifth  23.71  Control  Sixth  26.59 

B.  Average  Time  per  Correct  Solution 

Special  Fifth   30.7  Special   Sixth   23.8 

Control  Fifth  43.5  Control  Sixth  35.6 

The  results  show  clearly  enough  the  decided  supe- 
riority of  the  Special  Group ;  the  Special  Fifth  exceeds 
the  record  of  the  Control  Sixth  in  each  comparison,  espe- 
cially if  speed  is  also  taken  into  account,  and  the  detailed 
distributions  of  individual  scores  bear  out  the  superior- 
ity. In  a  way,  of  course,  this  is  no  more  than  would  be 
expected;  our  pupils  were  selected  partly  for  their  rec- 
ords in  the  school,  and  it  is  generally  conceded  that 
quality  of  work  in  arithmetic  is  the  primary  considera- 
tion in  determining  school  standing  in  these  grades  of 
the  elementary  school. 

49.  Reasoning  Tests,  I  and  II  (Bonser).  These  two 
tests  were  given  to  the  Special  Group  February  22,  1917, 
and  to  Rooms  G,  F,  and  Y  of  the  Control  Group  on 
February  22,  March  1,  and  March  13,  respectively.  They 
comprise  simple  problems  in  arithmetic  in  which  stress  is 
laid  in  scoring  upon  correctness  of  method  and  there  is 
no  penalty  for  inaccuracy  of  figures.  Following  Bon- 
ser's  directions  to  stop  all  pupils  when  the  first  one  fin- 
ishes, we  obtained  from  the  Special  Group  the  following 


Educational  Tests  and  Outcomes  59 

time-limits,  which  were  used  later    with    the    Control 
Group : 

Fifth  Grade  Sixth  Grade 
Test  I  A                                      108  sec.  103  sec. 

Test  IB  94  82 

Test  II  A  107  73 

Test  II  B  64  64 

It  will  be  noted  that  while  a  few  pupils  in  our  Spe- 
cial Group  made  surprisingly  poor  records,  the  Group 
as  a  whole  is  distinctly  better  than  the  Control  Group ; 
in  fact,  the  Special  Sixth  does  more  than  twice  as  well 
as  its  Control  Group,  and  the  Special  Fifth  even  runs 
ahead  of  this  Control  Sixth.  Because  Bonser  fails  to 
give  the  time-limits  on  which  his  scores  are  computed, 
we  cannot  compare  our  results  with  his ;  presumably  our 
time-limits  were  shorter.  We  may  note  that  our  best 
record  is  within  one  point  of  the  perfect  score,  40. 

Scores  in  Bonser  Reasoning  Tests  I  and  II 

Poorest  Median  Best  Poorest  Median  Best 

Special    Fifth  4  14.50     30  Special    Sixth  8  22.50  39 

Control  Fifth  0  6.70     25  Control   Sixth  0  10.15  24 

50.  TJiorndike  Reading  Scale  A:  Visual  Vocabulary. 
This  test  was  given  to  the  Special  Group  October  17th 
and  to  the  Control  Group  three  months  later,  so  that 
these  circumstances  distinctly  favored  the  Control 
Group.  We  used  a  method  of  scoring  more  complicated 
than  that  proposed  by  the  author*  and  obtained  thereby 
a  better  differentiation  of  the  pupils.  The  lines  on  the 
test-form  are  numbered  from  4  to  10.5  to  indicate  the 
relative  difficulty  of  the  words  in  each.  By  giving  to 
each  word  the.  value  thus  indicated,  complete  failure 
would  mean  330.5  errors.  We  computed  the  per  cent,  of 
accuracy  in  relation  to  this  maximum  of  inaccuracy, 
multiplied  by  100,  and  divided  by  the  time  in  seconds 

*E.  L.  Thorndike.     The  measurement  of  ability  in  reading.     Teachers 
College  Record,  15:  Sept.,  1914. 


60  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

needed  to  complete  the  test.  The  results  coincide  re- 
markably well  with  those  obtained  with  the  Binet  vocab- 
ulary test:    the  sixth  grade  does  distinctly  better  than 

Thorndike  Reading  Scale  A 

iPoorest     Aver.     Best  Poorest     Aver.  Best 

Special   Fifth       41        89.3      204.4          Special    Sixth        78        158.5  354.4 

Control   Fifth        26        75.3      141.0          Control  Sixth        26        106.7  236.0 

the  fifth  grade  and  our  Special  Group  does  distinctly 
better  than  the  Control  Group,  despite  the  three  months' 
advantage  of  the  latter. 

51.  New  York  Ventilation  Commission  Vocabulary 
Test.  This  material  was  prepared  by  W.  A.  McCall  and 
was  intended  to  comprise  a  series  of  words  equal  in  diffi- 
culty to  the  Thorndike  scale  just  discussed.  Actually, 
it  turns  out  to  be  much  more  difficult.  We  gave  it  to 
both  our  Special  and  our  Control  Group  in  March,  1917. 
Because  a  number  of  poorer  pupils  made  fast  records 
by  giving  up  the  attempt  to  mark  the  words  in  the  last 
three  lines,  we  have  found  it  better  to  grade  this  test 
simply  in  terms  of  correct  responses,  using  the  credit 
values  assigned  by  the  deviser  of  the  test  to  each  set  of 
words.  The  maximal  possible  score  is  352.5  points :  the 
actual  obtained  scores  are  here  indicated.     The  Special 

New    York    Ventilation    Commission    Vocabulary    Test 

Poorest     Aver.      Best  Poorest     Aver.      Best 

Special    Fifth     95        153.9    224.5  Special    Sixth  115        200.6    282.0 

Control  Sixth     29        112.8    249.0  Control  Sixth      73        157.2    306.5 

Group  is  found  to  be  almost  exactly  a  year  ahead  of  the 
Control  Group  in  the  abilities  demanded  by  this  test. 

52.  Thorndike  Reading  Scale  Alpha.  This  was  giv- 
en to  the  Special  Group  October  18,  1916,  and  to  Room 
G  of  the  Control  Group,  January  25th,  1917.  For  rea- 
sons beyond  our  control  we  were  unable  to  give  this  scale 
to  the  rest  of  the  Control  Group  and  regard  our  work 


Educational  Tests  and  Outcomes  61 

with  it  as  mainly  preliminary  to  the  giving  of  the  Alpha 
2  Scale.  We  may  note,  however,  that  as  with  the  Thorn- 
dike  Reading  Scale  A  (Test  50),  we  obtained  better 
differentiation  by  scoring  after  a  different  plan  than  that 
proposed  by  the  author  of  the  scale.*  We  found  that  it 
was  desirable  also  to  record  and  utilize  the  speed  of  per- 
formance. When  this  is  done,  the  average  for  the  Spe- 
cial Sixth  is  considerably  better  than  that  of  the  Special 
Fifth,  whereas,  by  the  Thorndike  method  of  figuring 
class  scores,  the  Special  Fifth  surpasses  the  Special 
Sixth,  8.5  vs.  6.78.  The  inference  is,  then,  that  the  Spe- 
cial Fifth  is  as  capable  as  the  Special  Sixth  of  reading 
a  passage  and  getting  the  correct  ideas  from  it,  but  that 
it  is  not  able  to  do  this  in  so  short  a  time.  Comparison 
with  data  published  by  Thorndike  show  that  our  Special 
Fifth  was  much  better  than  his  fifth  grades,  but  that  our 
Special  Sixth  was  only  slightly  better  than  his  sixth 
grades. 

53.  Thorndike  Scale  Alpha  2,  Part  II,  for  the  Un- 
derstanding of  Sentences,  t  This  was  given  to  the  Spe- 
cial Group  February  23,  1917,  and  to  Rooms  F,  Y,  and 
G  of  the  Control  Group  earlier  in  that  month.  The  time 
of  completion  was  marked  on  the  papers.  All  of  the 
Special  Group  finished  within  the  30  minutes  allowed. 
Because  we  tried,  however,  to  combine  certain  data  from 
Scale  Alpha  we  gave  over  the  utilization  of  the  time 
records.  Since  our  data  for  Steps  4,  5.25,  and  6  were 
too  inaccurate,  our  final  measure  of  ability  was  based 
on  Steps  7  to  9.  The  number  of  right  responses  for  each 
step  is  multiplied  by  the  value  of  the  step,  and  the  sum 


*E.  L.  Thorndike.  The  measurement  of  ability  in  reading  Teachers 
College  Record,  15:  Sept.,  1914. 

fE.  L.  Thorndike.  An  improved  scale  for  measuring  ability  in  read- 
ing.    Teachers  College  Record,  November,   1915,  and  January,   1916. 


62  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

of  these  products  for  Steps  7  to  9  affords  the  figure  here 
used  to  measure  each  pupil's  ability. 

On  this  basis  the  Special  Sixth  is  virtually  identical 
with  the  Special  Fifth,  102  and  101.  If  the  class  scores 
are  computed  according  to  the  method  prescribed  by 
Thorndike,  the  relation  is  reversed,  as  the  Special  Fifth 
scores  7.25  and  the  Special  Sixth  scores  7.14,  which  in- 
dicates, once  more,  that  the  former  grade  was  as  capable 
as  the  latter  in  reading  a  passage  and  getting  the  correct 
ideas  from  it.  Our  Control  Groups  may  also  be  com- 
pared with  the  tentative  scores  set  by  Thorndike  and 
with  those  just  cited  for  our  Special  Groups,  as  follows: 

Grade  Five:  Thorndike  5.75      Our  Control  5.96     Our  Special   7.25 

Grade   Six:  Thorndike  6.50     Our  Control  6.43      Our  Special  7.14 

Grade  Seven:  Thorndike   7.00 

Grade  Eight:  Thorndike  7.50 

It  may  be  noted  that  our  selected  pupils  are,  on  the 
average,  better  than  7th-grade  expectations;  probably 
by  the  end  of  the  year  they  would  reach  8th-grade  stand- 
ards. The  test,  then,  should  be  of  service  in  differenti- 
ating bright  pupils. 

54.  Punctuation  Test.  In  March,  1917,  the  Total 
Group  took  a  punctuation  test  of  the  following  sort.* 

"Insert  capital  letters  and  the  proper  punctuation  marks  so  as  to 
indicate  the  sentences  in  the  following  passages. 

"What  a  cozy  little  room  this  is  the  moment  I  opened  the  door  I  fell 
in  love  with  the  place  do  you  see  the  great  open  fire-place  at  the  end  of 
the  room  it  will  hold  a  four-foot  log  on  the  panel  above  it  you  see  the 
motto  of  good  cheer  on  each  side  is  a  many-paned  window  and  a  glimpse 
of  the  garden  the  windows  just  now  are  framed  in  brilliant  red  leaves  of 
woodbine  is  there  anything  so  homelike  as  books  and  a  fire  here  are  all  kinds 
of  books  ranged  in  cases  on  each  side  of  the  room  what  treasures  for  a 
rainy  day  now  I  will  pull  out  a  chair  before  the  fire  and  snuggle  down  in 
luxury  with  a  story  book." 

No  time-limit  was  set;  on  the  contrary,  quality  was 
urged  and  hurry  discouraged.  Most  of  the  pupils  fin- 
ished    in     two     to     three     minutes;     all     in     seven 

*This  test  was  one  of  a  number  of  'unclassified'  forms  examined  by 
Miss  Coy  at  Teachers  College,  Columbia  University.  We  do  not  know  who 
devised  it  or  whether  it  has  been  described  in  print. 


Educational  Tests  and  Outcomes  63 

minutes.  The  score  was  one  point  for  each  punctuation 
or  capital  letter  correctly  placed,  with  no  deduction  for 
incorrect  ones.  Perfect  score  is  20.  Reference  to  the 
tabular  summary  will  show  that  the  Special  Group  runs 

Scores  in  Punctuation  Test 

Poorest  Median  Best  Poorest  Median  Best 
Special    Fifth          4         14.75        19-         Special    Sixth  2         14.75        19 

Control  Fifth  0         12.10        19  Control  Sixth  2         11.92        19 

about  3  points  better  than  the  Control  Group,  but  that 
no  differences  appear  between  the  5th  and  the  6th  grades. 
Three  of  the  Control  Fifth  who  scored  18  or  19  were 
among  those  selected  as  qualified  for  the  Special  Group ; 
Pupil  No.  24,  who  made  the  low  score  in  the  Special 
Sixth,  was  slated  by  other  mental  tests  for  failure ;  omit- 
ting him,  the  poorest  score  for  the  Special  Sixth  would 
have  been  9  instead  of  2.  If  we  take  all  these  items  into 
account,  the  punctuation  test  is  a  pretty  fair  index  of 
school  intelligence. 

55.  Winch  Composition  Test.  On  October  31,  1916, 
the  pupils  of  the  Special  Group  were  given  a  sheet  of 
paper  containing  the  words  of  the  first  list  used  by 
Winch*  and  on  November  3,  1916,  the  words  of  the  sec- 
ond list,  with  the  instructions  for  writing  a  composition 
as  specified  by  him.  The  pupils  took  from  20  to  90  min- 
utes for  each  composition.  Later,  these  compositions 
were  typewritten  (to  avoid  impressions  from  handwrit- 
ing that  might  affect  judgment  of  composition)  and 
given  to  seventeen  students  of  a  college  class  in  educa- 
tional measurement,  who  graded  them  on  the  basis  of  the 
Thorndike-Hillegas  Extension  of  the  Hillegas  Scale  for 
the  Measurement  of  English  Composition. 


*See  the  writer's  Manual   of  Mental  and  Physical  Tests,   Part  II,   p. 
269,  Test  46. 


64  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

Scores  in  the  Winch  Composition  Test 

First  Composition                   Second  Composition 

Poorest  Aver.         Best         Poorest         Aver.         Best 

Special  Fifth               27.7  38.0           47.6             28.4             39.4           49.1 

Special  Sixth              33.7  47.8           63.0              28.6             44.1           62.5 

By  combining  the  scores  of  the  two  compositions  and 
then  comparing  these  scores  with  the  standards  com- 
puted by  us  in  terms  of  percentiles  (see  next  chapter), 
we  find  that  in  October  the  average  score  in  the  Special 
Fifth  almost  reaches  the  median  score  to  be  expected  of 
fifth  grades  in  June  (43d  instead  of  50th  percentile), 
while  that  of  the  Special  Sixth  is  better  than  the  median 
score  to  be  expected  of  sixth  grades  in  June  (54th  in- 
stead of  50th  percentile).  The  composition  work  of  one 
pupil  in  the  Sixth  (No.  19)  was  graded  as  equal  to  the 
average  performance  of  students  at  the  end  of  the  sopho- 
more year  in  the  high  school,  i.  e.,  about  five  years 
advanced ! 


Chapter  V 

INDIVIDUAL  DIFFERENCES  IN  THE  MENTAL- 
ITY OF  PUPILS  IN  THE  SPECIAL  GROUP 

In  the  preceding  chapters  the  mental  and  education- 
al tests  have  been  explained  and  their  outcomes  reviewed, 
one  by  one,  from  the  standpoint  of  the  tests  themselves. 
These  outcomes  brought  out  individual  differences  of  a 
more  or  less  striking  character.  It  was  demonstrated, 
for  instance,  that  some  of  the  children  in  the  Control 
Group  were  superior  in  mental  and  in  pedagogical  abil- 
ity to  some  of  those  in  the  Special  Group ;  it  is  equally 
true,  though  perhaps  not  so  clearly  demonstrated  in 
what  has  been  said  thus  far,  that  some  of  the  children 
that  had  been  selected  for  the  Special  Group  were  rela- 
tively inferior  in  mental  and  pedagogical  ability  and 
ought  to  have  been  left  in  the  Control  Group.  Similarly, 
our  various  tests  have  clearly  revealed  inequalities  with- 
in the  mental  equipment  of  individual  children ;  one  may 
surpass  the  others  in  memorizing,  but  be  himself  sur- 
passed in  reasoning;  one  may  excel  in  arithmetic,  an- 
other in  drawing,  etc. 

Now,  in  this  investigation  we  are  interested  in  the 
mentality  of  the  individual  pupils  under  observation  as 
much  as  we  are  interested  in  the  mental  and  educational 
tests  that  were  applied  to  them.  "We  perceived  early  in 
the  investigation  the  desirability  of  bringing  together 
for  each  child  all  the  facts  that  we  could  assemble  (at 
least  from  classroom  investigation)  that  would  throw 
light  upon  his  '  gif tedness. '  This  chapter  describes  the 
method  by  which  these  records  of  individual  pupils  were 
made  up.  The  majority  of  the  data  was  that  obtained 
directly  from  the  mental  and  educational  tests :    to  these 

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68 


Classes  for  Gifted  Children 


Explanation  of  Percentile  Scores 


No.  Name 

47.  Woody    Arithmetic    Test — 
Add. 

47.  Woody    Arith.    Test-Subtrac- 
tion 

47.  Woody    Arith.   Test-Multipli- 
cation 

47.  Woody  Arith.   Test-Division 

48.  Woody-McCall   Arith.   B-I 

48.  Woody-McCall  Arith.  B-II 

49.  Bonser  Reasoning  I  and  II 

37.  Ayres  Spelling  List  V 

50.  Thorndike     Visual    Vocabu- 

lary 

51.  N.    Y.    Ventilation    Commis 

sion  Vocabulary 

52.  Thorndike  Scale  Alpha 

21.  Trabue  Tests  B  and  C 

22.  Trabue  Tests  J  and  K 

18.  Word  Building 

55.  Composition    (Winch) 

54.   Punctuation 

38.  Handwriting 

41.   Drawing — Wagon 
40.   Drawing — Horse 

34.  Steacy     Drawing     Construc- 

tion  1-40 

35.  Steacy     Drawing     Construc- 

tion 41-100 

30.  Thurstone   Hand  Test 
33.   Thurstone  Flag  Test 

31.  Thurstone   Spatial   Relations 

32.  Thurstone  Punched  Holes 
12.  Memory — Lincoln  and   Pig 
12.   Deferred  Memory — Lincoln 
12.   Memory — Marble   Statue 

26.  Equivalent   Proverbs 

27.  Bonser    Reasoning    III,    V, 

VI 
29.  Thurstone  Reasoning 
24.   Completion     of     No.     Series 

(Coy)     ■ 
45.  Multiplication — Initial 

45.  Multiplication — Final 


Score    Used    in    Percentile    Tables 
Number  of  problems  solved  correctly  in 

20  min. 
Number  of  problems  solved  correctly  in 

20  min.     * 
Number  of  problems  solved  correctly  in 

20  min. 
Number  of  problems  solved  correctly  in 

20  min. 
Number  of  problems  solved  correctly  in 

20  min. 
Number  of  problems  solved  correctly  in 

20  min. 
Credit  of  2  for  each  correct  solution 
Per  cent,  of  list  spelled  correctly 
Per    cent,    of    accuracy    divided   by    the 

time 
Per  cent,   correct 


Sum  of  the  scores  for  Steps  7  to  9 
Sum  of  scores  for  B  and  C,  by  Trabue's 

method   of   scoring 
Sum  of  scores  for  J  and  K,  by  Trabue's 

method    of  scoring 
Total   number   of   words  in   10  minutes 
Grades    by    Thorndike-Hillegas    Compo- 
sition Scale 
Number  of  punctuation  marks  correctly 

placed 
Grades  by  Ayres   Handwriting  Scale 
Grades  by  Thorndike  Drawing  Scale 
Grades  by  Thorndike  Drawing  Scale 
Time  divided  by  the  number   correct 

Time  divided  by  the   number   correct 

Rights   minus  twice  the  wrongs 
Rights   minus  twice  the  wrongs 
Total  time  divided  by  number  of  rights 
Number  of  holes  correctly  placed 
Number  of  "ideas"  remembered 
Number  of  "ideas"  remembered 
Number  of  "ideas"  remembered 
Total   time  for  Sets  I,   II,    and  VI.  di- 
vided by   total   number   correct 
Total  score  for   3  tests  when  scored  by 

Bonser's  method 
Rights  minus  twice  the  wrongs 
Scored  by  method  described  in  text 
Scored    by    total    time    divided    by    per 

cent,  of  accuracy 
Tot :il   time  divided  by  per   cent,   of  ac- 
curacy 


Individual  Differences   in   Special   Group  69 

data  were  added  notes  on  the  ambitions  and  ideals  of  the 
children  and  notes  on  certain  non-intellectual  traits  not 
readily  subjected  to  the  objective  tests. 

A.      SUMMARIZING  FOR  EACH  PUPIL  THE  OUTCOMES  OF  THE 

TESTS 

1.  Tlie  Pupil's  Record  Card.  For  the  purpose  of 
summarizing  the  test  results  for  each  pupil  we  prepared 
a  form  of  pupil's  record  card  with  spaces  for  entering 
for  every  one  of  our  group  tests,  (a)  the  pupil's  own 
score,  (&)  the  maximal,  (c)  the  minimal  and  (d)  the 
median  (or  average)  scores  for  his  Special  Class  and 
for  his  grade  generally  and  also  (e)  his  percentile  stand- 
ing. 

2.  The  Percentile  Tables.  A  word  of  explanation 
is  necessary  to  explain  the  way  in  which  the  percentile 
tables  were  obtained.  They  were  derived  from  tables 
arranged  for  34  tests  for  the  fifth  and  for  the  sixth 
grade  separately.  In  27  of  them  the  data  were  obtained 
by  us  directly  in  our  group  tests.  Those  for  Woody 's 
four  arithmetic  tests  were  obtained  from  the  compre- 
hensive results  he  publishes,  while  those  for  handwrit- 
ing, English  composition  and  spelling  have  been  com- 
puted from  meagre  data  supplied  by  other  investigators 
and  by  rather  elaborate  processes  of  interpolation.*  In 
general,  we  claim  for  these  percentile  tables  merely  an 
approximation  for  a  group  of  unselected  children  of  the 


*Thus,  our  percentiles  for  handwriting  were  computed  by  taking 
results  reported  by  C.  H.  Judd,  Measuring  the  Work  of  the  Public  Schools, 
p.  70,  and  other  data  supplied  by  D.  Starch,  Educational  Measurements, 
pp.  80-3.  Those  for  English  composition  are  derived  from  Trabue,  Sup- 
plementing the  Hillegas  scale,  Teachers  College  Record,  January,  1917,  by 
taking  his  figures  for  the  medians  and  probable  errors  and  working  out  the 
percentile  curves  on  the  assumption  that  the  distribution  is  of  the  normal 
type.  A  similar  method  was  jised  in  working  out  percentiles  for  spelling 
on  the  basis  of  averages  and  the  standard  deviations  given  by  L.  P.  Ayres 
in  his  Measurement  of  Ability  in  Spelling,  pp.  24-34. 


70  Classes  foe  Gifted  Children 

5th  or  6th  grade.*  Most  of  these  percentile  distribu- 
tions are  based  upon  about  70  cases  per  distribution — 
not  enough  for  statistical  precision,  but  enoughto  be 
helpful  to  subsequent  investigators.  The  amount  of  work 
that  we  have  had  to  do  in  our  attempt  to  reach  these 
approximate  percentiles  where  data  were  lacking, 
prompts  us  to  urge  every  investigator  who  reports  norms 
and  averages  for  any  test  to  supply  some  sort  of  indica- 
tion of  the  detailed  distribution  of  his  data. 

Finally,  it  hardly  need  be  pointed  out  that  the  percen- 
tiles we  have  supplied  are  serviceable  only  to  investiga- 
tors who  follow  our  methods  of  administering  and  scor- 
ing the  tests  in  question. 

3.  Classification  of  the  Tests.  A  certain  difficulty  of 
interpretation  appeared  when  these  individual  record 
cards  were  examined,  just  because  of  the  large  number 
of  tests  that  we  had  employed.  To  meet  this  difficulty 
it  was  evidently  worth  while  to  attempt  a  classification 
of  the  tests  into  groups  that  measure,  so  far  as  may  be 
inferred,  the  same  or  similar  abilities.  A  classification 
into  the  following  groups  was  adopted:  Binet  I.  Q., 
arithmetic,  spelling,  vocabulary,  reading,  language,  com- 
position, handwriting,  drawing,  spatial  relations,  mem- 
ory, reasoning,  rapidity  of  learning. 

4.  'Ability  Profiles.'  The  next  obvious  step  was  to 
represent  the  standing  of  the  individual  pupil  graphi- 
cally, so  that  it  might  be  comprehended  almost  at  a 
glance,  and  this  has  brought  us  to  a  device  analogous  to 
the  'psychological  profile'  of  Kossolimo.  Across  the  top 
of  the  chart  are  arranged  the  34  tests,  grouped  as  just 


*Unselected  in  the  sense  of  including  all  the  pupils  in  the  fifth  and 
sixth  grades  in  the  Leal  School:  it  is  quite  possible,  in  fact  quite  probable, 
that  the  presence  of  the  neighboring  university  community  has  lifted  these 
scores  perceptibly  above  those  to  be  expected  by  random  selection  of  fifth 
and  sixth-grade  pupils. 


Individual  Differences  in  Special  Group  71 

explained  Running  vertically  along  the  left-hand  mar- 
gin are  the  various  percentiles  from  0  to  100,  while  the 
median  performance,  50th  percentile,  is  shown  by  a  heavy 
horizontal  line  across  the  middle  of  the  chart.  One  thing 
needs  further  explanation.  The  distance  vertically  from 
the  50th  to  the  60th  percentile  is  made  much  less  than  the 
distance  between  the  90th  and  100th  percentile — indeed, 
this  last  distance  is  the  same  as  that  from  the  50th  to  the 
90th  percentile.  The  idea  is  to  indicate  visually  the  fact 
that  in  actual  ability  the  60th  person  is  relatively  much 
more  like  the  50th  than  the  100th  person  is  like  the  90th, 
or,  in  other  words,  that  the  step  from  the  position  of  90th 
to  the  position  of  100th  in  a  rank-order  of  100  persons  is 
far  larger  (in  terms  of  performance)  than  is  the  step 
from  the  position  of  50th  to  the  position  of  60th  in  the 
same  rank-order.* 

In  our  sample  chart  reference  to  the  graph  for  Pupil 
No.  1  will  show  how  the  plan  is  worked  out.  This  girl 
is  above  the  99th  percentile  in  Binet  I.  Q.,  138;  she 
reaches  the  98th  percentile  in  the  Woody  addition  test, 
the  99th  in  the  Woody  subtraction  test,  and  so  on.  Note 
that  this  gifted  girl  makes  the  highest  score  of  any  child 
in  the  entire  fifth  grade  in  7  of  the  34  tests  here  listed, 
that  she  reaches  or  exceeds  the  record  of  90  pupils  per 
100  in  20  of  the  34  tests  and  that  in  only  one  test,  initial 
speed  in  multiplication,  did  she  even  fall  as  low  as  the 
median  5th-grade  child. 

On  the  same  chart  there  is  shown  for  comparison  the 
results  obtained  from  Pupil  No.  4.  Note  that  though 
a  member  of  our  Special  Fifth,  he  reaches  the  100th  per- 


*The  adjustment  involves  the  supposition  that  the  surfaces  of  distri- 
bution for  these  34  tests  are  of  the  'normal'  type,  and  is  then  a  simple 
matter  of  translating  percentiles  into  terms  of  standard  deviation.  The 
distances  from  the  median  to  the  percentiles  60,  70,  80,  90,  96,  99,  and  100 
are  approximately  in  the  ratio  1,  2,  3,  5,  6,  8  and  10,  respectively. 


72 


Classes  for  Gifted  Children 


I     I 


I     I     I 


FIG.  II. 


Binet  I.  Q. 
W.  Add. 
W.  Sub. 
W.  Mult. 
W.  Div. 
W.  Mc  I. 
W.  Mc  II. 
Bonser 

Ayres,  List  V. 
Thorn.  Vocab. 
Vent.  Com. 
Thorn.  Sc.  A. 
Trabue  B.  &  C. 
Trabue  J  &  K 
Word  Build. 
Comp.  (Winch) 
Punctuation 
Handwriting 
Drawing — W. 
Drawing — H 
Steacy  1-40 
Steacy  41-100 
Thur.  Hand 
Thur.  Flag 
Thur.  Sp.  Rel. 
Thur.  P.  H. 
Memory  L.  &  p. 
'  Deferred  Mem. 
M.  Statue 
Eq.  Prov. 
Bonser  III,  V,  VI 
Thur.  Reas. 
H  r=-  ■»    C°y — Com. 

Mult.— Initial 
Mult.— Final 


" ta(2^^was,-aj-p*. 


Individual  Differences   in   Special,   Group  73 

centile,  i.  e.,  leads  the  Total  Fifth,  in  but  one  test,  that 
he  attains  the  90th  percentile  in  but  5  tests,  falls  below 
the  75th  in  23  tests,  below  the  median  in  16  tests  (vir- 
tually half  of  them)  and  below  the  25th  in  5  tests.  This 
record  accords  neatly  with  his  Binet  I.  Q.,  101.5.  Note 
that  he  exceeds  our  Pupil  No.  1  in  ability  to  deal  with 
spatial  relations,  which  has  only  a  low  correspondence, 
on  the  whole,  with  general  intelligence. 

5.  Report  for  Parents  and  Teachers.  Now  these 
record  cards  and  charts  are  excellent  for  those  who  have 
had  some  training  in  statistics  or  mental  tests,  but  they 
have  considerably  less  usefulness  for  many  teachers  and 
most  parents.  On  this  account,  we  next  prepared  for 
each  child  a  much  simplified  and  condensed  record  of  his 
work  and  abilities.  There  is  shown  herewith  a  bona-fide 
sample  of  this  Report  of  Educational  and  Psychological 
Tests*  In  filling  out  this  record,  the  data  for  the  num- 
ber of  children  in  a  100  (or  1000)  who  would  reach  a 
given  I.  Q.  were  taken  from  Terman,t  as  was  also  the 
characterization  of  each  I.  Q.  as  'average,'  'superior,' 
'  very  superior, '  etc.  The  ' '  Results  of  Tests ' '  that  follow' 
are  grouped  under  13  rubrics,  with  the  first — arithmetic 
— divided  to  show  separately,  ability  in  computation  and 
ability  in  arithmetical  reasoning.  Reasoning  concern- 
ing non-arithmetical  situations  was  given  a  place  by  it- 
self, and  experience  showed  that  it  would  have  been 
better  to  have  subdivided  this  again  into  "Reasoning 
with  Concrete  Material"  and  "Reasoning  with  Abstract 
Material."  Similarly,  experience  showed  that  it  would 
have  been  better  to  have  subdivided  the  heading  just 

*The  plan  of  this  mimeographed  "Report"  form  is  made  evident  here 
by  printing  in  italics  all  the  portions  of  it  that  were  filled  in  with  the  pen 
for  each  pupil  separately. 

tT/ie  Measurement  of  Intelligence,  pp.   78-79. 


74 


Classes  for  Gifted  Children 


REPORT  OF  EDUCATIONAL  AND  PSYCHOLOGICAL  TESTS* 

NAME  Burrows,  Dorothy  GRADE  5  D  INTELLIGENCE  QUOTIENT 
138.  In  October,  1916,  her  chronological  age  was  10  yr.  1  mo.  Her 
mental  age  was  13  yr.  11  mo..  The  I.  Q.  is  therefore  138.0.  One  child 
in  250  has  an  I.  Q.  as  high  as  138.  General  intelligence  is  therefore  very 
superior.  In  mental  age  she  ranks  3d  in  present  class  of  15;  in  I.  Q. 
she  ranks  3d  in  class. 


RESULTS  OF  TESTS 
Subject  Rank  in  class   Rank    in    100 

of  fifteen  children 


Remarks 


Arithmetic: 
Computation 

2 

4 

Remarkably  good  in  com- 
putation. Is  very  accu- 
rate   and    is   also    rapid. 

Arithmetic: 
Reasoning 

1 

1 

Arithmetical  reasoning  is 
of  the  very  highest  qual- 
ity— probably  about  that 
of  an  8th-grade  pupil. 

Spelling 

3 

6 

Excellent 

Vocabulary 

7 

25 

Has  a  13-yr.-old  vocabu- 
lary. (25  is  probably 
too  low) 

Understanding 
of    passage   read 

1 

1 

Very  superior 

General    language 
ability 

1 

1 

Very  superior 

Composition 

4 

10 

At  beginning  of  5th 
grade,  did  work  which 
was  average  for  end  of 
6th  grade 

Handwriting 

S 

26 

Drawing 

2 

8 

Excellent   - 

Esthetic   apprecia- 
tion 

5.5 

Spatial      relations 
and  forms 

5 

20    (or 
better) 

Very  good 

Reasoning 

1.5 

8 

Very  superior.  Ability  to 
see  more  or  less  abstract 
relationships  is  remarka- 
ble. 

Speed  of  learning 

6 

Very    high; 
perhaps  10 

Very    rapid   improvement 

Memory 

2 

5 

Rote  memory  is  about 
that  of  a  17 -year-old. 
Logical  memory  remark- 
ably good 

Summary  and  Conclusions: 

General  intelligence  is  remarkably  high.  She  makes  first-class  records 
in  all  subjects.  Least  high  records  in  vocabulary,  handwriting  and  spatial 
relations. 

Has  very  superior  ability  in  reasoning.  Will  certainly  do  good  work 
in  any  form  of  mathematics.  Language  ability  is  also  very  remarkable. 
She  wants  to  be  a  poet,  an  artist  or  "just  a  housewife." 

Is  probably  the  best  student  in  the  5th  grade — results  are  more  con- 
sistently excellent  than  those  of  the  others. 


child. 


''The  italicized  portions  of  the  report  are  the  ones  written  in  for  each 


Individual  Differences  in   Special  Group  75 

before  that  into  two  headings — "Spatial  Relations"  and 
"Ability  to  Use  Forms." 

The  "Rank  in  the  Class  of  15"  is  figured  from  the 
top,  so  that  No.  1  is  the  best  and  15  the  poorest  in  each 
grade  of  the  Special  Group ;  the  "Rank  in  100  Children" 
means  rank-order  in  an  unselected  group  of  the  child's 
school  grade ;  here  the  number  is,  of  course,  the  reverse 
of  the  child's  percentile  score,  e.  g.,  if  the  percentile  score 
were  90,  the  rank  would  be  10th. 

In  deciding  the  rank  to  accord  a  pupil  under  each  of 
the  headings,  several  tests  were  usually  taken  into  ac- 
count, e.  g.,  six  tests  were  used  to  estimate  ability  in 
arithmetical  computation.  This  grouping  of  the  tests 
for  purposes  of  practical  condensation  and  simplified  re- 
porting followed  the  arrangement  here  depicted,  but  it 
must  be  explained  that  we  did  not  always  use  the  aver- 
age or  median  score  obtained  by  the  child  in  a  given 
group  of  tests  to  represent  his  status  in  that  group  ;  some- 
times, when  the  results  were  discordant,  we  used  our 
judgment  in  deciding  which  test  ought  to  be  given  the 
greatest  weight.  On  this  account  we  claim  nothing  more 
than  an  approximation  in  the  figures ;  nevertheless,  they 
do  serve  excellently  to  report  general  tendencies  in  the 
child's  lay-out  of  capacities  and  are  probably  consider- 
ably more  precise  and  certainly  much  more  meaningful 
than  the  usual  run  of  school  marks. 

The  final  section  of  this  "Report"  for  teachers  and 
parents — "Summary  and  Conclusions" — is  self-explan- 
atory. Miss  Coy,  who  prepared  these  summaries,  tried 
to  state  clearly  the  ability,  both  general  and  particular, 
of  the  child,  to  show  his  weak  points  and  to  make  rec- 
ommendations for  future  training.  Here  also  was  intro- 
duced in  many  instances  a  statement  of  the  child 's  ambi- 
tions and  their  relations  to  his  ability. 


76 


Classes  tor  Gifted  Children 


Grouping  of  the  Tests  for  Ranking  Pupils  under   Various  Subjects  in  the 
"Report   of   Educational   and  Psychological   Tests" 

Woody,    Series    A,    and    Woody-McCall 
arithmetic  tests  I  and  II 


1.  Arithmetical    computation 

2.  Arithmetical  reasoning 

3.  Spelling 

4.  Vocabulary 


Understanding 
read 


of    passage 


6.  General  language  ability 

7.  Composition 

8.  Handwriting 

9.  Drawing 

10.  Esthetic  appreciation 

11.  Spatial  relations   and   forms 


12.   Reasoning 


13.  Speed  of  learning 


14.  Memory 


Bonser  reasoning  tests  I  and  II 
Analogies* 

Ayres  spelling  List  V  and  in  part  also 
Lists  N  and  R 

Binet  vocabulary 

Thorndike  vocabulary 

Ventilation  Commission  vocabulary 

Thorndike   scale   alpha   for  understand- 
ing passage  read 

Trabue  tests  B,  C,  J,  K 
Completion  tests  3  and  4 

Winch  composition  test 

Samples  scored  by  Ayres  scale 

Drawing  of  wagon  and  horse 
Steacy  drawing  construction  41-100 
In  part  church  and  snowfight  drawings 

Thorndike  esthetic  appreciation  test 

Thurstone  flag  test 
Thurstone  hand  test 
Thurstone  spatial  relations  A 
Form  boards 

Equivalent  proverbs  I,  II,  VI 
Bonser  reasoning  III,   V,   VI 
In   part   painted    cube    (Doll),   Whipple 
picture     arrangement     and     Thurstone 
reasoning  tests 

Multiplication  practise 

Pyle  marble-sorting  test 

In     part     Thurstone     substitution     and 

symbol-digit  substitution 

Whipple's  three  tests  of  logical  memory, 
immediate  and  deferred  recall 


B.       THE  AMBITIONS  AND  IDEALS  OF  INDIVIDUAL  PUPILS  IN 
THE  SPECIAL  GROUP 

The  pupils  in  the  Special  Group  were  asked  on  June 
4,  1917,  to  write  out  and  hand  to  Miss  Coy  statements 
of  what  they  wanted  to  do  when  they  grew  up.  The  re- 
sults are,  I  think,  of  sufficient  interest  to  warrant  their 
inclusion  in  this  report. 


*The  analogies  test  was  placed  here  because  it  had  afforded  such  close 
correlations  with  liking  for  mathematics  and  school  grades  in  algebra  in 
the  Urbana  High  School.  I  think  now  this  is  still  defensible,  but,  never- 
theless, it  would  be  better  to  consider  analogies  as  a  test  of  ability  to  grasp 
abstract  verbal  relationships.     It  could  be  placed  in  Group  6  or  Group  12. 


Individual  Differences   in   Special   Group  77 

What  the  Children  in  the  Special  Group  Wish  to  do  When  They  'Grow   Up' 
(June  4,   1917) 

1.  A  poet   (just  a  rhyme-maker),  an  artist,  or  just  a  housewife. 

2.  A  writer.      "I  like  to  write  stories." 

3.  Mother  of  a  large  family,  or  an   actress. 

6.  An  artist.     Likes  to  draw  plants  and  flowers. 

7.  A  dressmaker  or  a  bookkeeper. 

8.  A  farmer. 

9.  A   stenographer. 

10.  An  artist. 

11.  A  stenographer  or  music  teacher. 

12.  Carpenter  or  mechanic. 

13.  A  singer,  "like  Galli-Curci." 

14.  A  banker  -or   a   farmer. 

15.  To  travel  to  National  Parks  of  U.  S.  and  to  foreign  countries,  to  teach 

music  or  drawing. 

16.  Soldier,  or  sailor,   or  moanted  policeman. 

17.  League  baseball  pitcher,  motorcycle  racer,  pole  vaulter,  wrestler,  and  be 

an  "honest  man." 

18.  A  musician.      In  university  wantsito  take  music,  foreign  language. 

19.  An  author.     Probably  teach  school  while  learning  to  write. 

20.  A  farmer. 

21.  An  actress  or  a  nurse 

22.  An  auto  mechanic,  a  farmer,  or  a  carpenter. 

23.  A  piano  soloist.     Expects  to  graduate  from  university  at  21  years,  then 

marry  and  go  on  with  piano  work. 

24.  A  railroad  engineer. 

25.  Teacher  of  piano. 

26.  Electrical  engineer.     Is  going  to  be  "a  great  inventor." 

27.  An  artist.     Wants  to  marry  and  paint  her  husband  and  children. 

28.  A  teacher  or  a  Red   Cross  nurse. 

29.  An  acrobat  in  a  circus. 

30.  A  soldier — "not  a  general  or  hero,  but  just  a  common  soldier." 

A  perusal  of  this  summary  of  ambitions  ought  to 
convince  the  reader,  even  though  he  be  unacquainted 
with  the  children  or  their  performance  in  the  several 
tests,  that  in  the  main  few  of  the  pupils  want  to  do 
things  for  which  they  lack  ability.  The  tendency,  on 
the  contrary,  is  to  report  ambitions  that  seem  distinctly 
too  low.  Thus,  No.  11,  who  wishes  to  be  a  stenographer, 
has  an  I.  Q.  of  141 ;  No.  12,  who  wishes  to  be  a  carpenter 
or  mechanic,  has  high  scores  in  reasoning  and  in  esthetic 
judgment;  No.  30,  who  wishes  to  be  "just  a  common  sol- 
dier," has  an  I.  Q.  of  133  and  is  remarkably  gifted  along 
several  lines.  It  is  not  too  much  to  declare,  I  think,  on 
the  basis  of  this  very  simple  trial,  that  efforts  to  improve 
and  to  guide  the  education  of  pupils  of  superior  mental 
endowment  ought  to  include  a  study  of  the  ambitions 


78  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

and  ideals  of  these  pupils  and  a  systematic  effort  to  fos- 
ter and  develop  ambitions  commensurate  with  the  latent 
capacities  revealed  by  objective  testing. 

C.      INDIVIDUAL    DIFFERENCES    IN    NON-INTELLECTUAL 
TRAITS 

An  attempt  was  made  to  analyze  and  record  impres- 
sions of  certain  traits  of  a  predominantly  non-intellec- 
tual sort.  For  this  purpose  Dr.  Manuel  drew  up  a  rec- 
ord sheet  in  which  31  traits  were  listed.*  The  main 
feature  was  a  device  for  recording  the  estimated  amount 
of  each  trait  by  marking  a  point  somewhere  along  a 
horizontal  line,  (three  and  a  half  inches  long),  which 
was  assumed  to  stretch  from  the  lowest  degree  of  the 
trait  (left  end  of  the  line)  through  average  (center  of 
the  line)  to  the  highest  degree  of  the  trait  (right  end  of 
the  line).  The  first  few  lines  of  the  record-sheet  (di- 
rections and  first  two  traits  only)  will  illustrate  the  idea. 

Score  Sheet :     Character  Schedule 

Name 

Place  a  mark  across  each  horizontal  line  to  show  the  amount  or  degree  of 

the  quality  possessed  by  this  child 

1.  Very    low- 
spirited    Very   cheerful 

2.  Moods  very  Very   rapidly 
permanent    changing    moods. 

The  complete  list  of  traits  was  grouped  as  follows : 

Emotions 

1.  Cheerfulness 

2.  Permanence  of  mood 

3.  Tendency  toward  extreme  depression 

4.  Readiness  to  become  angry 

5.  Readiness  to  recover  from  anger 

6.  Occasional   liability  to  extreme   anger 

7.  Degree  of  esthetic  feeling 

8.  Degree  of  sense  of  humor 

9.  Degree  of  excitability   (vs.  phlegmatic  tendency) 

Self  Qualities 

10.  Desire  to  excel  in  competition 

11.  Desire  to  impose  his  will  on  others  (tolerance  vs.  intolerance) 

12.  Self  confidence 

*These  were  itaken,  with  modifications,  from  E.  Webb,  Character  and 
Intelligence.     Mon.  Brit.  J.  Psych.,  1915. 


Individual  Differences   in   Special   Group  79 

13.  Self  esteem 

14.  Fondness  for  large  social  gatherings 

15.  Fondness  for  small  circle  of  intimate  friends 

16.  Tendency  to  do  kindnesses  on  principle 

17.  Degree  of  corporate  spirit 

18.  Conscientiousness 

19.  Readiness  to  accept  the  views  of  others   (vs.  independence) 

20.  Desire  to  be  liked  by  associates 

21.  Degree  of  tact  in  getting  on  with  people 

Activity 

22.  Amount  of  .time  given  to  mental  work    (studying) 

23.  Amount  of  bodily  activity    (restlessness)    while  at  work 

24.  Amount  of  energy  thrown  into  games  and  sports 

25.  Amount  of  foresight   (working  for  distant  ends)    displayed 

26.  Tendency  to  persist  at  tasks  in  face  of  obstacles 

27.  Tendency  to  persist  in  face  of  the  monotony  of  long  application 

Intelligence 

28.  Quickness  of  apprehension 

29.  Profoundness  of  apprehension    (seeing  relationships  between  ideas) 

30.  Soundness  of  common  sense    (practicality  of  judgment) 

31.  Originality  of  ideas    (fertility   and  resourcefulness  in  solving  problems 

and  meeting  situations) 

Each  child  in  the  Special  Group  was  graded  in  these 
31  traits  by  three  judges,  Dr.  Henry,  Miss  Coy  and  the 
classroom  teacher.  These  judges  had  before  them  not 
only  this  character  schedule,  but  also  another  type- 
written set  of  'Explanations'  wherein  each  of  the 
31  traits  was  described  in  more  detail  than  was  feasible 
on  the  record-sheet.  For  example,  Trait  No.  3  is  thus 
elaborated : 

"Occasional  liability  to  extreme  depression.  Eager 
to  fasten  on  a  grievance,  real  or  imaginary,  and  make  the 
most  of  it.  Liability  to  occasional  moods  during  which 
everything  looks  black.  Having  occasions  during  which 
the  individual  takes  a  dejected  view  of  life." 

The  results  are  on  file  in  the  writer's  office,  but  rea- 
sons beyond  our  control  have  prevented  us  from  working 
them  over  for  this  report.  "We  content  ourselves  with 
describing  the  method  and  listing  the  traits  in  the  hope 
that  these  may  be  helpful  to  other  investigators  and  per- 
haps to  parents  and  teachers. 


Chapter  VI 

RELATION  OF  THE  TEST  RESULTS  OF  PUPILS 
IN  THE  SPECIAL  GROUP  TO  OTHER  IN- 
DEXES OF  INTELLIGENCE 

We  have  not  attempted  any  elaborate  study  of  the 
inter-correlations  of  our  tests,  tempting  as  that  is,  but 
have  limited  ourselves  to  working  out  certain  methods 
that  would  summarize  the  performance  of  each  child 
in  the  Special  Group  in  the  mental  and  educational  tests 
and  that  could  be  used  for  comparison  with  other  meas- 
ures or  indications  of  intelligence. 

A.      THE   MEDIAN   TEST   PERCENTILE 

One  of  these  methods  dealt  with  the  obtaining  of  a 
summary  of  the  child's  rank  in  the  34  tests  for  which 
we  were  able  to  calculate  percentile  distributions.  It 
was  obtained  by  taking  the  median  of  his  station  in  them 
and  may  be  termed  the  "median  test  percentile."  It 
ought  certainly  to  give  a  fairly  precise  indication  of  the 
general  level  of  mental  ability  of  each  child. 

In  the  accompanying  table  this  median  test  percen* 
tile  is  compared  with  the  results  of  the  Binet  testing  and 
with  the  rank  in  intelligence  as  estimated  by  the  class 
teacher. 

The  Binet  testing  has  already  been  sufficiently  clearly 
explained.  Readers  will  understand  that  it  yields  two 
values  with  which  comparison  may  be  instituted — the 
absolute  mental  age  and  the  relative  mental  age,  or  I.  Q. 

80 


Eelation  op  Eesults  to  Intelligence       81 

Median   Test  Percentile   of  Each   Pupil  in   the  Special  Fifth   and  Special 

Sixth,  Together  With  Rank  in  Intelligence  Quotient,  Mental 

Age  and  Teacher's  Estimate 


Rank  in 

'upil 

Median  Test 

Median  Test 

Rank  in 

Rank  in 

Rank  by  Teacher 

Percentile 

Percentile 

I.  Q. 

Mental  Age 

June,   1917 

1 

91.5 

1 

3 

3 

1 

2 

83.5 

3 

1 

1 

3 

3 

77.5 

5 

10 

13 

10 

4 

47.5 

14 

15 

14 

14 

5 

58.0 

13 

13 

12 

13 

6 

75.0 

8 

5 

6 

5 

7 

66.5 

10 

8 

10 

11 

8 

59.5 

12 

6 

7 

12 

9 

77.0 

6 

12 

8 

8 

10 

70.5 

9 

11 

11 

7 

11 

79.5 

4 

2 

2 

2 

12 

76.0 

7 

7 

4.5 

9 

13 

42.5 

15 

14 

15 

15 

14 

60.0 

11 

4 

4.5 

4 

15 

90.8 

2 

9 

9 

6 

35 

90.5 

— 

— 

— 

— 

16 

76.0 

6 

1.5 

4 

7 

17 

68.0 

7.5 

5 

2 

2 

18 

66.5 

9 

12 

11.5 

14 

19 

87.5 

2 

4 

3 

3 

20 

68.0 

7.5 

14 

14 

11 

21 

57.0 

11 

13 

5 

9 

22 

51.5 

12 

11 

9.5 

8 

23 

39.0 

15 

3 

7 

13 

24 

50.0 

13 

15 

15 

12 

25 

79.5 

4 

10 

11.5 

6 

26 

59.0 

10 

6 

8 

10 

27 

82.5 

3 

8 

6 

4 

28 

78.5 

5 

7 

9.5 

5 

29 

40.5 

14 

9 

13 

15 

30 

91.5 

1 

1.5 

1 

1 

34  88.4         ..  —  —  —  — 

B.      THE    TEACHER'S  ESTIMATES   OF   INTELLIGENCE 

The  estimate  of  intelligence  by  the  teacher  of  the  Spe- 
cial Group  was  undertaken  with  all  the  precautions,  and 
following  rather  closely  the  directions,  suggested  by 
Stern.*  The  30  cards  containing  the  names  of  the  pupils 
were  arranged  by  her  in  order  of  estimated  general  in- 
telligence on  November  7,  1916,  again  on  December  16, 
1916,  and  finally  on  June  6,  1917.  In  making  these 
rank-orders  the  teacher  did  not  refer  to  the  pupils'  school 

*L.  W.  Stern.  Psychological  Methods  of  Testing  Intelligence,  Balti- 
more, pp.   116-127. 


82  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

marks,  but,  though  instructed  to  estimate  in  terms  of 
general  intelligence,  it  is  probable  that  the  estimate  was 
somewhat  colored  at  least  by  the  performance  of  the 
children  as  pupils  in  the  classroom.  The  results  show 
that  the  teacher's  estimates  differed  a  good  deal  on  the 
three  different  occasions;  by  the  Spearman  footrule 
method  of  correlation,  her  ranking  of  the  Special  Fifth 
children  shows  correlations  of  from  76  to  84,  but  that  of 
the  Special  Sixth  children  ranges  from  56  to  70  only. 
In  illustration,  a  pupil  ranked  2d  in  the  6th-grade  in 
November,  was  ranked  8th  in  December  and  13th  the 
following  June. 

C.       CORRELATIONS   OF   VARIOUS   CRITERIA  OF   INTELLIGENCE 

The  correlations  between  these  several  measures  of 
intelligence  for  each  grade  are  shown  herewith.  There 
must  of  necessity  be  high  correlations,  it  will  be  under- 
stood, between  mental  age  and  I.  Q.,  since  the  latter  is 
based  upon  the  former.  Where  the  chronological  ages 
of  the  children  are  closely  similar,  in  the  5th  grade,  the 
correlation  is  very  high,  .96,  and  where  the  chronological 
ages  are  more  varied,  in  the  6th  grade,  the  correlation 
falls  to  .74.    Of  the  several  correlations,  special  interest 

Correlations    of   Various   Criteria    of   Intelligence 

Median  Test  Teacher's  Intelligence 

Percentile  Estimate  Quotient 

Grade                                                      V     VI  V     VI  V     VI 
Teacher's  Estimate                               .84    .82 

Intelligence  Quotient  .56    .34  .84    .41 

Mental  Age                                            .64    .42  .84    .69  .96    .74 

attaches  to  those  between  the  teacher's  estimate  of  intel- 
ligence in  June,  after  a  year's  familiarity  with  the  pu- 
pils, and  the  summary  for  the  series  of  34  mental  tests 
(median  test  percentile)  ;  this  correlation  reaches  .84 
with  the  5th  and  .82  with  the  6th  grade  (probable  errors 


Relation  of  Results  to  Intelligence  83 

about  0.11),  which,  it  will  be  noted,  is  as  high  as,  or 
higher  than,  the  correlations  which  obtained  among  the 
November,  December,  and  June  estimates  made  by  the 
teacher.  If  we  assume  that  the  estimate  of  the  class  teach- 
er after  a  year's  acquaintance  with  the  30  pupils  repre- 
sents their  real  order  of  ability,  then  the  34  tests  (which 
could  have  been  administered  in  a  total  of  17  hours  dur- 
ing the  first  few  weeks  of  the  year)  would  have  been  as 
nearly  correct  in  their  ranking  of  the  intelligence  of  the 
Special-Fifth  pupils  as  was  the  teacher  in  November, 
1916  (both  correlations  .84)  and  far  more  nearly  correct 
in  their  ranking  of  the  Special-Sixth  pupils  than  was  the 
teacher  in  November  (the  tests  correlating  .82  and  the 
teacher's  November  estimate  .56  with  her  June,  1917, 
estimates). 

Other  correlations  to  which  interest  attaches  are  those 
that  show  that  the  teacher's  estimate  of  intelligence  is 
more  closely  related  to  mental  age  than  it  is  to  the  in- 
telligence quotient,  The  fact  is,  of  course,  that  our  select- 
ed class  really  was  not  very  homogenous ;  it  represented 
both  too  wide  a  range  of  mental  ages  and  also  too  wide 
a  range  of  chronological  ages.  Any  observer  is  likely 
to  give  too  much  credit  to  the  chronologically  more  ma- 
ture child  and  too  little  credit  to  the  chronologically  less 
mature  child,  not  remembering  that  for  the  latter  to  do 
equally  good  work  in  the  same  school  grade  with  the 
former  is  really  a  demonstration  of  greater  ability.  This 
error  probably  affected  this  teacher's  estimate  of  her 
pupils'  intelligence. 

D.      RELATION   OF  THE   TEST   RESULTS   TO   SCHOOL 
ACHIEVEMENT 

About  February  1,  1917,  all  the  pupils  in  the  Special 
Group  had  completed  the  work  ordinarily  covered  in  one 


84  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

school  year.  By  June,  1917,  both  grades  had  covered 
another  year's  work,  with  the  exception  of  the  work  in 
history,  in  which,  for  various  reasons,  some  of  them  be- 
yond our  control,  they  lacked  about  three  or  four  months ' 
work.  During  the  first  week  of  June,  1917,  the  children 
of  the  Special  Group  were  given  a  set  of  final  examina- 
tions in  the  6th-grade  and  7th-grade  subjects,  with  the 
understanding  that,  if  they  made  satisfactory  grades  in 
these  examinations,  they  would  be  permitted  to  enter 
the  grade  ahead  by  making  up  the  history  work  during 
the  summer  or  during  the  following  year. 

The  results  of  these  examinations  should  have  a  spe- 
cial significance  for  comparison  with  our  predictions 
from  the  mental  and  educational  tests  that  we  had  made 
more  or  less  continuously  through  the  year.  Just  how 
significant  they  are,  we  shall  leave  to  the  judgment  of 
the  reader  when  the  details  shall  have  been  unfolded. 

Counting  No.  35  (the  girl  with  the  extraordinary  I.Q. 
of  167,  who  was  transferred  to  the  Special  Fifth  from 
one  of  the  Control  Fifths  at  our  request),  nine  of  the 
Special  Fifth  were  promoted  to  the  seventh  grade  in 
June,  1917 ;  and  eight  of  the  Special  Sixth  were  at  the 
same  time  promoted  to  the  eighth  grade.  These  promo- 
tions were  made  by  the  superintendent  of  schools  on  the 
basis  of  final  examinations. 

It  is  of  peculiar  interest  now  to  see  which  pupils 
failed  to  secure  promotion  in  June,  and  whether  these 
are  the  failures  that  would  have  been  predicted  by  our 
1<  sis. 

No.  4  was  absent  from  the  examinations.  He  plans 
to  take  them  in  September,  1917,  and  to  study  up  for 


Eelation  of  Eesults  to  Intelligence  85 

them  during  the  summer.  Our  test  results  would  indi- 
cate that  his  success  would  be  problematic* 

No.  34  was  absent  and  will  take  the  examinations  in 
September,  1917.  He  should  have  not  the  slightest  diffi- 
culty. 

No.  15  left  Urbana,  March  1,  1917,  for  Pittsburgh. 

There  remain  12  cases  that  demand  scrutiny. 

In  the  fifth  grade  Nos.  3,  5,  9,  and  13  and  in  the 
sixth  grade  Nos.  16,  18,  21  and  26  failed  in  arithmetic; 
they  are  allowed  to  take  '  make-up '  examinations  in  Sep- 
tember, 1917,  and  to  be  promoted  then  if  successful.* 
Some  portion  of  these  June  failures,  I  feel  certain,  may 
be  ascribed  to  the  method  of  grading  the  examination 
papers.  It  is  the  custom  for  the  5th-grade  and  6th-grade 
teachers  in  the.  Leal  School  to  give  half-credit  for  a 
solution  whose  method  is  correct  but  whose  computation 
is  wrong,  and  I  understand  that  all  promotions  have 
been  based  on  this  method  of  grading  papers.  The  pa- 
pers for  our  Special  Group,  however,  were  graded  by  the 
superintendent,  who  gave  no  credit  for  problems  worked 
by  the  right  method  but  with  incorrect  answers  (unless 
possibly  when  there  was  only  a  slight  clerical  error) . 

We  have  no  official  right,  of  course,  to  question  the 
decisions  of  the  superintendent  of  schools.  He  felt,  we 
understand,  that  the  pupils  of  the  Special  Class  were 
prone  to  inaccuracy  and  that  that  fault  must  be  eradi- 
cated, and  secondly,  he  felt  that  if  a  child  were  to  qualify 
to  do  two  years'  work  in  one,  he  ought  not  only  to  do 
faster  work  but  also  a  better  grade  of  work  than  pupils 
who  are  permitted  to  progress  through  the  grades  at  the 


*In  September,  Nos.  3,  4,  5,  13,   16,   21,   26,  and  34  passed  examina- 
tions for  promotion.     No.  18  moved  out  of  town. 


86  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

normal  pace.  He  also  apparently  felt  that  his  one,  un- 
standardized  final  examination  was  a  better  index  of 
ability  in  arithmetic  than  the  results  of  the  Courtis, 
Woody,  Wood-McCall,  error  checking,  and  multiplica- 
tion tests  that  we  used  during  the  year,  supplemented 
by  daily  observation  of  the  class  work  of  the  children. 

In  any  event,  there  are  four  cases  in  which  the  super- 
intendent's decision  as  to  promotion  in  June  was,  in  our 
opinion,  wrong.  Nos.  3,  16,  and  26  have  been  shown 
conclusively  by  our  many  tests  to  be  capable  in  arithme- 
tic :  of  these  Nos.  16  and  26  reason  very  well  in  arith- 
metic— they  are  above  the  average  of  the  Special  Group 
in  this  respect — but  both  of  them  are  likely  to  be  inac- 
curate in  their  figuring;  presumably,  had  their  ability 
been  tested  by  ordinary  examinations,  scored  on  the  same 
basis  as  used  for  ordinary  pupils  of  these  grades,  their 
promotions  would  not  have  been  held  up. 

On  the  other  hand,  No.  24  was  promoted,  greatly  to 
our  surprise.  His  I.  Q.  is  just  under  100,  the  lowest  in 
the  Special  Sixth ;  his  mental  age  is  the  lowest  in  the 
Special  Sixth ;  in  the  34  tests  he  ranks  13th,  in  the  teach- 
er's estimate  of  intelligence  he  ranks  12th  in  his  group 
of  15  (see  the  table  earlier  in  this  chapter  showing  his 
median  test  percentile,  etc.).  He  certainly  has  no  more 
ability  than  an  average  sixth-grade  child.  Our  sum- 
mary for  this  boy  runs :  ' '  Compared  with  general  sixth- 
grade  standards,  he  is  about  average  in  general  language 
ability,  composition,  handwriting,  drawing,  general  rea- 
soning ability  and  memory;  he  is  considerably  above 
average  in  spelling,  size  of  vocabulary  and  computation ; 
he  is  far  below  average  in  arithmetical  reasoning,  under- 
standing of  passages  read  and  handling  of  spatial  rela- 
tions. "    He  is  also  conspicuously  steady  in  his  work.  We 


Kelation  of  Results  to  Intelligence  87 

surmise  that  either  the  examination  was  not  difficult  with 
respect  to  arithmetical  reasoning  or  that  this  boy  hap- 
pened to  hit  on  the  right  methods ;  his  good  ability,  stead- 
iness and  accuracy  in  arithmetical  computation  then  car- 
ried him  through  where  the  cleverer  but  less  accurate 
failed. 

-  The  failing  of  Nos.  5,  13,  18  and  probably  that  of 
No.  21  in  the  arithmetic  examination  is  justified  by  the 
results  of  the  mental  tests  during  the  year. 

In  the  same  way  we  might  show  that  in  the  language 
examination  the  failing  of  Nos.  8,  18  and  22  and  prob- 
ably that  of  Nos.  20  and  29  seems  justified,  and  the  fail- 
ing of  No.  26  not  justified,  by  all  that  we  discovered  by 
mental  and  educational  tests  during  the  year. 

Another  method  of  checking  up  the  results  of  our 
mental  tests  in  terms  of  school  performance  is  to  reverse 
the  procedure  and  predict  from  the  tests  what  should 
have  happened  in  the  classroom.  We  have  worked  this 
out  by  starting  at  the  lower  end  and  eliminating  differ- 
ent numbers  of  pupils  in  various  ways.  For  instance, 
if  we  assume  that  a  class  of  gifted  children  ought  at 
least  not  to  include  in  its  enrollment  any  pupils  poorer 
than  the  top  20  per  cent,  of  the  ordinary  school  popula- 
tion, and  if  we  assume  thaVthe  Stanford  Revision  of  the 
Binet  is  the  criterion  of  mental  ability,*  we  would  rule 
out  all  pupils  with  an  I.  Q.  under  110.;  that  would  have 
removed  six  from  our  Special  Fifth  and  five  from  our 
Special  Sixth,  and  those  thus  removed  would  have  been 
children  whose  outcome  in  the  final  examination  was 
as  indicated  in  the  accompanying  table. 


*I  am  indebted  to  my  colleague,  Dr.  Ruml,  for  statistical  demonstra- 
tion that  the  Stanford  Revision  is  superior  to  the  Goddard-Edition  Binet  or 
the  Yerkes-Bridges  Scale  for  the  purpose  of  selecting  the  upper  20  per  cent. 


88 


Classes  for  Gifted  Children 


School  Success  of  Pupils  in  the  Special  Class  Whose  Intelligence  Quotient 
was  Less  than  110 


Grade 


Special 
Fifth 


Special 
Sixth 


Pupil         I.  Q.      Rank  by  Outcome  of  Final  Examinations 

I.  Q.  within  for  Two  Years'  Work  in  One 
Special  Grade 

4  101.5            15  Absent;  would  anticipate  failuro 
13          101.6            14  Failed   in  arithmetic 

5  107.0             13  Failed  in  arithmetic 
9          108.2             12  Failed  in  arithmetic 

10  109.3  11  Passed 

3  109.7  10  Failed  in  arithmetic 

24  99.3  15  Passed 

20  103.6  14  Failed  in  language 

21  107.0  13  Failed  in  arithmetic 

18  107.2  12  Failed   in  arithmetic  and  lan- 

guage 

22  108.0  11  Failed  in  language 

In  the  same  way  we  can  discover  which  pupils  would 
have  been  ruled  out  by  the  mental  age  criterion,  by  the 
teacher's  June  estimates  of  intelligence,  by  our  median 
test  percentile,  etc.  The  operation  of  this  last-mentioned 
criterion  is  shown  here  in  tabular  form. 

School  Success  of  Pupils  in  the  Special  Class  Whose  Median  Test  Percentile 
was  Less  than  60 

Grade  Pupil  Median  Test  Percentile    Outcome  of   Final   Examinations 

Failed  in   arithmetic 
Absent;  would  anticipate  failuro 
Failed   in   arithmetic 
Failed  in  language 
Passed 

Failed  in  language 
Passed 

Failed  in  language 
Failed   in  arithmetic 
Failed    in    arithmetic    and    lan- 
guage 

Another  criterion  may  be  mentioned  that  is  of  more 
interest  than  the,  median  test  percentile,  namely,  the 
criterion  afforded  by  a  special  combination  of  six  only  of 
the  tests  which  is  recommended  in  Chapter  VIII  for  use 
in  selecting  pupils  for  gifted  classes  in  these  grades. 
These  tests  are  the  Woody-McCall  Mixed  Fundamentals 
]>Trabue  Language  Scales  B  and  C,  Bonser  Reasoning 
Tests  III,  V  and  VI,  Equivalent  Proverbs  VI,  Thurstone 
Substitution  Test  and  Thurstone  Punched  Holes  Test. 


13 

42.5 

Special 

4 

47.5 

Fifth 

5 

58.0 

8 

59.5 

23 

39.0 

Special 

29 

40.5 

Sixth 

24 

50.0 

22 

51.5 

21 

57.0 

26 

59.0 

Relation  of  Results  to  Intelligence  89 

One  way  of  using  these  or  similar  combinations  of  tests 
for  selective  purposes  is  to  determine  empirically  cer- 
tain 'critical  scores'  for  each  test  below  which  the  test 
is  arbitrarily  said  to  be  '  failed. '  Selection  may  then  be 
conditioned  upon  having  'passed'  a  given  number  of 
the  tests.  In  illustration,  the  lower  critical  scores  in  the 
six  tests  have  been  taken  as  follows : 

Failing  Scores  for  Admission  to 

Test  Special   Fifth   Grade  Special    Sixth    Grade 

Woody-McCall        45  or  more  seconds  35   or  more   seconds 

Trabue  25  or  fewer  points  26  or  fewer  points 

Bonser  38  or  fewer  points  45  or  fewer  points 

Proverbs  250  or  more  seconds  175   or  more   seconds 

Substitution  95  or  fewer  letters  132  or  fewer  letters 

Punched     Holes      4  or  fewer  'holes'  6  or  fewer  holes 

It  has  then  been  assumed  that  pupils  who  fail  in  four, 
five  or  six  of  these  six  tests  should  not  be  admitted  to 
a  special  class  for  the  gifted  and  that  pupils  who  fail  in 
three  of  them  should  not  be  admitted  unless  individual 
examination  (as  by  the  Stanford  Revision  of  the  Binet 
tests)  should  reveal  an  I.  Q.  of  110  or  above.  When 
these  criteria  are  applied  to  the  Special  Classes  in  the 
Leal  School,  the  outcome  is  as  shown  in  the  accompany- 
ing table.  Here  there  need  be  no  comment  in  the  cases 
of  Nos.  4,  13,  20  and  29,  because  the  critical  score  cri- 
terion agrees  with  the  (relatively)  low  I.  Q.  and  the  fail- 

School  Success  of  Pupils  in  the  Special  Class  who  Fail  to  Beach  the  Critical 

Lower  Score  in  Three  or  More  of  the  Six  Tests  Recommended  for 

Use  in  Selecting   Gifted  Pupils 

Grade    Pupil  Number  Tests  Failed  I.   Q.  Outcome  of  Final  Examinations 

4.                          5  101.5   Absent;  would  anticipate  failure 

Special      8                          4  122.7  Failed  in  language 

Fifth       13                           5  101.6  Failed  in   arithmetic 

14                          3  130.9   Passed 

18  3  107.2  Failed  in  language  and  arithme- 
tic 

20  5  103.6  Failed  in  language 

Special   21  3  107.0   Failed   in  arithmetic 

Sixth       24  3                        99.3   Passed 

28  3  115.3   Passed 

29  4  110.6  Failed  in  language 


90  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

ure  to  accomplish  two  years'  work  in  one.    The  remain- 
ing cases  deserve  individual  comment. 

No.  8  would  have  been  rejected  forthwith  by  the  criti- 
cal score  criterion  that  we  have  proposed  and  he  failed 
in  language ;  on  the  other  hand,  he  secured  on  the  Binet 
tests  an  I.  Q.  of  122.7,  which  would  rank  him  in  the  top 
five  per  cent.  In  his  "Report  of  Educational  and  Psy- 
chological Tests"  his  mental  and  educational  status  is 
summarized  thus : 

"His  I.  Q.  of  122.7  is  probably  somewhat  high.  His  work  in  the 
Binet  was  marked  by  exceeding  variability;  many  of  his  successes  in  the 
higher  years  are  due  to  ability  to  deal  with  objects  in  space,  as  in  the 
clock  test,  the  enclosed  boxes,  etc. 

"His  work  is  in  general  below  the  average  of  the  Special  Fifth,  prob- 
ably in  the  lower  third  of  it.  His  poorest  work  is  in  spelling,  composition, 
handwriting,  drawing  and  memory,  the  last  being  particularly  poor.  His 
best  work  is  in  arithmetic,  both  in  reasoning  and  in  computation,  and  in 
other  work  dealing  with  concrete  objects.  He  seems  to  have  remarkable 
ability  to  visualize  objects  or  at  least  to  image  in  motor  terms  how  they 
will  behave  when  moved  about  in  space. 

"He  is  nervous  and  excitable,  works  rapidly  and  makes  many  mis- 
takes. Has  difficulty  in  going  to  sleep.  Needs  to  be  trained  to  self-control, 
to  use  tools  and  to  play  outdoors.  He  likes  to  work  with  tools  and  wants 
to  be  a  farmer. 

"In  childhood  he  had  an  imaginary  companion  and  later  on  a  whole 
group  of  them,  13  or  14  in  number,  who  to  the  boy  were  almost  like  mem- 
bers of  the  family." 

From  these  comments  I  think  it  might  be  fairly  in- 
ferred that  it  is  at  least  questionable  whether  this  boy 
should  have  been  placed  in  the  Special  Group. 

No.  14,  by  the  method  Ave  are  advocating,  would  have 
been  classed  as  '  doubtful '  by  the  critical  score  criterion, 
but  would  have  been  placed  in  the  class  on  the  strength 
of  his  high  I.  Q.  (131),  which  is  about  the  degree  of  in- 
telligence reached  by  one  child  in  a  hundred.  He  passed 
the  final  examinations.  Let  us  see  whether  our  summary 
of  his  work  explains  this  apparent  inconsistency. 

"John  is  about  average,  when  compared  with  the  other  selected  children, 
in  arithmetical  reasoning,  spelling,  understanding  of  passages  read,  com- 
position, drawing,  general  reasoning  ability  and  speed  of  learning.  He  is 
below  the  average  in  general  language  ability  and  logical  memory.  But  on 
the  whole,  since  he  excels  the  average  in  range  of  vocabulary  and  esthetic 
appreciation,   he  may   be    classed   as   just    about  average.     Compared   with 


Eelation  of  Eesults  to  Intelligence       91 

general  fifth-grade  standards,  he  ranks  above  average,  of  course,  in  prac- 
tically everything. 

"A  striking  feature  of  his  work  is  its  deliberateness.  He  undoubtedly 
suffers  in  many  speed  tests  on  this  account. 

"He  wants  to  be  a  banker  or  farmer." 

From  this  summary  it  will  be  evident  that  this  boy's 
failing  in  three  of  the  six  tests  probably  springs  from 
his  deliberate  method  of  work  and  that  the  reference  of 
his  case  to  the  individual  examination  would  have  com- 
pensated for  this  handicap  and  placed  him  in  the  Special 
Group  where  he  was  able  to  do  satisfactory  work. 

No.  18,  if  handled  by  the  method  now  under  discus- 
sion, would  have  been  classed  as  '  doubtful '  by  the  group 
tests,  would  have  been  given  individual  examination  and 
rejected  on  account  of  her  I.  Q.  (107)  falling  below  110. 
She  actually  did  fail  in  language  and  in  arithmetic. 
Without  quoting  from  her  report  sheet  in  detail,  if  may 
be  stated  that  she  is  there  described  as  very  good  in 
mechanical  learning  but  extremely  poor  in  reasoning,  in 
which  she  falls  below  the  sixth-grade  average.  Her  work 
in  arithmetical  tests  shows  her  to  be  a  rapid,  somewhat 
inaccurate  worker  with  very  low  capacity  to  reason 
arithmetically.  Here,  then,  the  tests  function  accurately 
in  indicating  her  rejection. 

No.  21  who  failed  in  arithmetic,  is  a  girl  much  like 
No.  18,  but  somewhat  nervous  and  erratic  in  her  work. 
Her  best  achievement  is  in  literary  and  linguistic  direc- 
tions ;  in  fact,  she  seems  to  have  real  ability  there.  In 
arithmetic  she  is  just  about  average  for  the  sixth  grade. 
She  would  have  been  rejected  by  the  test  method,  and 
properly,  in  view  of  her  relatively  inferior  school  work 
outside  of  language  studies. 

No.  24  is  a  boy  who  would  have  been  classed  as 
'doubtful'  by  the  group  tests  and  then  rejected  for  his 
low  I.  Q. — 99.3.     The  anomaly  in  his  case  arises  from 


92  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

the  fact  that  he  passed  the  June  examinations  success- 
fully. Our  summary  describes  this  boy  as  an  "  average 
sixth-grade  pupil  who  certainly  ought  not  to  have  been 
placed  in  the  Special  Sixth."  He  excels  the  sixth-grade 
average  at  large  in  spelling,  vocabulary  and  accuracy  of 
computation,  although  he  is  slow  at  that ;  in  everything 
else  he  is  simply  mediocre.  There  is  no  obvious  way  to 
explain  his  success  in  passing  the  examinations,  which 
surprised  us  all,  including  his  teacher  (she  had  esti- 
mated him  as  12th  in  his  group  of  15  in  respect  to  gen- 
eral intelligence). 

Finally,  No.  28  failed  in  three  of  the  six  tests,  but 
has  an  I.  Q.  of  115  and  passed  the  examinations.  Her 
case  is,  therefore,  straight-forward.  She  is  considerably 
above  the  average  of  the  sixth  grade  in  almost  all  re- 
spects. She  shows,  however,  deficiencies  in  two  direc- 
tions: her  records  are  relatively  poor  in  tests  dealing 
with  more  concrete  materials  and  she  seems  somewhat 
peculiar  in  her  manner  (she  gives  the  impression  of  be- 
ing old  for  her  years ;  she  does  not  play  much  with  other 
children;  her  emotional  life  seems  not  entirely  normal). 

In  summary,  then,  of  the  eight  pupils  who,  on  the 
basis  of  our  proposed  system  of  selection  by  tests,  would 
not  have  been  admitted  to  the  Special  Class,  six  (Nos.  8, 
13,  18,  20,  21  and  29)  failed  to  pass  the  June  examina- 
tions satisfactorily ;  one  (No.  4)  ivas  absent  but  was  rea- 
sonably sure  to  have  failed;  one  (No.  24)  passed  the  ex- 
aminations to  the  surprise  of  those  who  had  watched  his 
daily  iv.ork.  Or,  reversing  the  statement,  of  the  12  pu- 
pils selected  for  the  class  by  the  teachers,  principal  and 
superintendent  in  September  who  by  the  superinten- 
dent's June  examinations  were  subsequently  failed  in 
either  one  or  two  subjects,  six  (Nos.  8,  13,  18,  20,  21,  29) 


Relation  of  Results  to  Intelligence  93 

would  have  been  rejected  at  the  outset  by  our  mental 
tests,  and  three  of  the  remaining  six  (Nos.  3, 16, 26)  were 
wrongly  failed,  as  can  be  abundantly  proved  by  our  nu- 
merous objective  measurements  of  their  ability  and  their 
classroom  performance. 

I  believe  that  this  constitutes  a  conclusive  demonstra- 
tion that,  while  truly  gifted  children  can  accomplish  the 
work  of  the  5th  and  6th  or  of  the  6th  and  7th  grades  in 
one  year,  the  selection  of  the  'gifted'  must  be  made  on 
a  basis  of  performance  in  mental  tests;  because  selec- 
tion by  teachers,  on  the  basis  of  classroom  impressions 
and  school  marks,  will  result  in  the  inclusion  of  pupils 
who  are  unfit  to  attempt  the  work. 


Chapter  VII 

INDIVIDUAL  DIFFERENCES  IN  THE  MENTAL- 
ITY OF  PUPILS  IN  THE  CONTROL  GROUP 

A.    'gifted'  children  in  the  control  group 

It  has  been  shown  that  within  the  Special  Group, 
selected  by  the  school  officials  for  their  presumptive 
school  ability,  were  some  eight  or  ten  pupils  that  failed 
to  accomplish  the  two  years'  work  in  one  year  in  a 
perfectly  satisfactory  manner  and  that  these  pupils,  with 
perhaps  minor  exceptions,  would  have  been  rejected  at 
the  outset,  had  the  selection  been  made  upon  a  basis  of 
mental  tests. 

Our  argument  in  favor  of  the  superiority  of  the  test 
method  is,  however,  incomplete  unless  we  can  show  that 
there  were  pupils  left  in  the  Control  Group  who  would 
have  succeeded  splendidly  in  the  Special  Group  and 
that  these  pupils  would  have  been  chosen  at  the  outset, 
had  the  selection  been  made  upon  a  basis  of  mental  tests. 

Our  method  of  demonstrating  this  argument  is  as 
follows:  when  group  tests  were  given  to  both  the  Spe- 
cial Group  and  the  Control  Group,  a  few  pupils  in  the 
latter  usually  made  better  records  than  the  average  of 
the  former  group  or  even  than  the  best  record  of  the 
former  group.  We  drew  up  a  list  of  the  pupils  who  most 
often  furnished  these  better  records,  using  17  of  our 
group  tests  to  supply  the  data.  Not  to  enter  into  details, 
inspection  of  this  list  indicated  that  certain  pupils  in 
the  Control  Group  might  be  expected,  according  to  men- 
tal tests,  to  be  as  good  as  the  standard  we  set  for  a  class 
of  'gifted'  children.     Without  mentioning  these  pupils 

94 


Individual  Differences  in  Control  Group  95 

by  name,  we  then  asked  the  teachers  of  the  Control 
Group,  now  that  they  knew  better  the  type  of  work  de- 
manded in  a  room  for  gifted  children,  to  specify  the 
pupils  in  their  charge  who  were  doing  the  best  work  and 
who  might  conceivably  have  been  chosen  to  join  the 
Special  Group. 

The  amount  of  correspondence  between  our  selection 
by  means  of  mental  tests  and  the  teachers'  selection  by 
classroom  observation  is  clearly  indicated  in  the  accom- 
panying tabular  summary,  in  which  we  have  tried  to 
indicate  also  in  a  concise  manner  certain  instructive  com- 
ments. We  feel  that  inspection  of  individual  records 
like,  these  is  worth  while,  particularly  in  those  few  cases 
in  which  the  mental  tests  and  the  teachers'  judgments 
show  discrepancy. 

Note  first  that,  had  membership  in  the  class  of  gifted 
children  been  determined  in  the  fall  of  1916  by  mental 
tests,  six  pupils  that  remained  in  the  Control  Fifth  and 
eight  pupils  that  remained  in  the  Control  Sixth  would 
have  been  chosen  as  gifted  pupils;  note  secondly  that 
the  teachers  of  the  Control  Group,  on  being  asked  to 
select,  on  the  basis  of  daily  observation  of  the  classroom 
work  in  the  fifth  and  sixth  grades,  those  pupils  who 
might  have  done  successful  work  in  the  Special  Class, 
named  of  tlieir  own  accord  five  of  the  six  selected  by  men- 
tal tests  for  the  fifth  and  seven  of  the  eight  selected  by 
mental  tests  for  the  sixth  grade. 

Let  it  be  added  that  four  of  these  children  are  known 
to  have  an  I.  Q.  over  120  and  that  it  is  reasonably  cer- 
tain that  eight  more  have  an  I.  Q.  over  115.  Five  of 
them  really  had  been  considered  by  the  teachers  pre- 
viously for  inclusion  in  the  Special  Group.  Four  of 
them,  it  is  to  be  noted,  chanced  not  to  have  been  in  the 


5 

Y21 

No 

Yes 

5 

Y25 

No 

Yes 

5 

Y29 

No 

Yes 

5 

Y35 

Yea 

Yes 

6 

F16 

No 

Yes 

6 

F19 

No 

Yes 

6 

F21 

No 

Yes 

Summary  of  Facts  about  'Gifted'  Pupils  in  the  Control  Group 

Grade        Pupil     Gifted  by     Gifted  by  _ 

Tests         Teacher  Comments 

5  F2  No  Yes        Tests  indicated  'good,'   but  not  bril- 

liant 

5  F6  Yes  No         Poor   in   arithmetic;    fine  otherwise. 

Has  I.  Q.  of   121 

5  Fll  Yes  Yes        Does  fine  work.     Parents  would  not 

permit  to  join  Special  Class. 

5  F12  Yes  Yes        No  reason  known  why  not  in  Spe- 

cial Class 

5  Y10  Yes  Yes        Previous   schooling  outside  Urbana, 

hence   no   basis   available   to  school. 

5  Yll  Yes  Yes        Considered    for    Special    Class;    no 

reason  known  why  not  put  there. 
Test  record  only   'good' 
Test  record  only   'good' 
Test  record   only   'good' 
Best  pupil  in  room.     Kept  in  Con- 
trol  Group  because  never  in  school 
before,   hence  no  record.      On  basis 
extraordinary    test    record     (I.     Q. 
167)    transferred   to    Special    Fifth, 
March  1,  passed  6th-grade  final  ex- 
aminations in  June. 
Test  records  only  'fair.' 
Test  records  only  'fair.' 
Regarded      as      doubtful      case     by 
teacher 

6  F20  Yes  Yes        Considered    for    Special    Class;     no 

reason  known  why  not  put  there. 

6  F34  Yea  Yes        Kept  in  Control  Group  because  had 

been  in  Urbana  schools  only  short 
time  and  record  felt  too  brief.  On 
basis  high  test  records  (I.  Q.  135), 
transferred  to  Special  Sixth  March 
1 ;  did  fine  work ;  "always  has  les- 
son; never  seems  to  study."  Passed 
7th-grade   examinations. 

6  G3  Yes  No-Yes    Fine    test    record;    teacher    deemed 

her  'average'  until  convinced 
wrong.* 

6  G14  No  Yes        Record  in  tests  not  good. 

6  G21  Yes  No         Tests  above  average  of  Special  Sixth 

in   10  to  16  tests. 
Offered     chance    to    enter     Special 

6  G23  Yes  Yes        Sixth,   but   wanted   to   remain    with 

Teacher    G. 

6  G27  Yes  Yes        Does  good  work.    No  reason  known 

why  not  chosen  for  Special  Sixth. 

6  G35  Yes  Yes        Ought  to  be  in   Special   Sixth.  Kept 

out  on  account  low  mark  in  geog- 
raphy ;  later  found  this  mark  due  to 
absence  from  an  examination  1 

6  G38  Yes  Yes        Work  ranges  average  to  extra  good. 

No  reason  assigned  why  not  chosen 
for  Special   Sixth. 

*This  girl  ranked  above  the  average  of  the  Special  Sixth  in  7  of  16 
tests — not  perhaps  a  very  brilliant  record,  yet  her  I.  Q.,  130,  is  very  high, 
while  she  excelled  every  child  in  the  Special  Group  in  three  of  four 
'reasoning'  tests.  This  record  was  reported  to  tho  teacher  with  the  intima- 
tion that  it  could  hardly  be  felt  to  agree  with  his  verdict  of  'average'  ability. 
After  careful  observation  ho  was  perfectly  convinced  that  the  girl  had 
superior  ability  and  merely  needed  to  have  her  timidity  overcome  and  to 
be  made  to  take  a  more  active  and  responsible  part  in  classroom  work. 
By  the  end  of  the  term  she  was,  in  fact,  making  a  much  better  showing 
in  her  school  work  and  her  teacher  was  agreed  that  she  probably  could  have 
done  successful  work  in  the  Special  Sixth.  I  think  this  is  worth  relating 
as  an  illustration  of  the  usefulness  of  mental  tests  in  correcting  teachers' 
impressions  of  children  who  happen  not  to  reveal  in  their  daily  work  the  ca- 
pacities they  really  possoss. 


Individual  Differences  in  Control  Group  97 

Leal  School  before  or  for  only  a  part  of  a  year  and  on 
that  account  lost  their  chance  of  being  chosen  to  join 
the  gifted  class.  This  number  may  be  larger  than  would 
be  expected  ordinarily,  but  it  indicates,  in  any  event,  one 
more  way  in  which  mental  tests  surpass  school  records 
for  the  classification  of  pupils. 

Since,  in  the  preceding  chapter,  it  was  shown  conclu- 
sively that  at  least  eight  of  the  30  pupils  in  the  Special 
Group  should  have  been  left  in  the  Control  Group,  and 
since  it  has  now  been  shown  that  at  least  12  of  the  pupils 
left  in  the  Control  Group  had  an  excellent  claim  (proved 
by  tests  and  approved  by  the  teachers)  to  inclusion  in 
the  original  Special  Group,  it  is,  I  think,  demonstrated 
conclusively  that  a  judicious  combination  of  mental  tests 
that  could  have  been  administered  to  the  Total  Group  in 
a  relatively  short  time  (say  two  hours)  would  have  selec- 
ted the  membership  of  the  Special  Group  in  a  manner 
unquestionably  more  satisfactory  than  the  mode  of  selec- 
tion actually  adopted — reference  to  school  marks  and 
teachers'  opinions.  If  the  waste  of  time  and  energy  in 
both  directions — the  teaching  of  the  8  wrongly  included 
and  the  failure  to  facilitate  the  school  progress  of  the  12 
wrongly  excluded — could  be  capitalized  in  dollars  and 
cents,  does  any  one  doubt  that  it  would  pay  for  the  cost 
of  applying  the  mental  tests? 

B.     'average'  and  'dull'    children  in  the  control 

GROUP 

Our  problem  may  next  be  extended  and  our  argument 
confirmed  in  this  wise :  if  teachers  show  a  certain  degree 
of  unreliability  in  selecting  'gifted'  pupils,  will  they 
show  a  similar  unreliability  in  selecting  'average'  or 
'  dull '  pupils,  or  is  it  only  in  detecting  the  superior  minds 


98  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

that  mental  tests  are  needed  as  correctives  of  the  school 's 
estimate  ? 

Each  of  the  three  teachers  of  the  Control  Group  was 
asked  to  select  two  pupils  she  would  regard  as  of  'aver- 
age' and  two  she  would  regard  as  of  'dull'  mentality. 
With  the  addition  of  a  thirteenth  case,  recorded  as  poor 
in  arithmetic  and  average  otherwise,  the  group  thus  se- 
lected for  us  was  given  not  only  all  the  group  tests  that 
were  given  to  the  Special  and  the  Control  Group,  but 
also  nearly  all  the  individual  tests  that  were  given  to 
the  Special  Group.  In  consequence,  we  had  for  this 
'baker's  dozen'  of  pupils,  opportunity  for  elaborate  men- 
tal analyses,  for  the  preparation  of  individual  record 
cards,  for  the  construction  of  percentile  graphs — in 
short,  the  same  opportunity  for  study  as  with  the  30 
pupils  in  the  gifted  class. 

In  this  condensed  report  of  our  work  the  analyses  of 
these  pupils  must  be  omitted.  Let  us  consider  only  cer- 
tain general  results.  Of  the  six  pupils  regarded  by  their 
teachers  as  'dull,'  one  is  rather  slow  but  probably  not 
really  dull  (I.  Q.  94)  ;  five  are  quite  assuredly  dull  and 
two  of  these,  indeed,  are  presumptively  feeble-minded! 
The  I.  Q.'s  for  these  five  are  78.4,  77,  72.5,  67.5  and  63.9. 
Of  the  six  pupils  regarded  by  their  teachers  as  'average' 
(omitting  the  13th  case  with  an  I.  Q.  of  91.5),*  the 
average  I.  Q.  is  112.9,  or  about  the  degree  of  intelligence 
attained  by  15  children  in  100  !f  Three  of  the  supposedly 


*An  interesting  type  of  case  exhibiting  very  poor  ability  to  see  rela- 
tionships or  to  reason  to  a  conclusion  if  in  abstract  terms,  but  rather  good 
ability  to  think  about  concrete  objects. 

tThis  result  may  perhaps  be  somewhat  affected  by  a  wrong  impres- 
sion of  'average'  ability  gained  by  teachers  who  have  taught  for  several 
years  in  a  school  attended  by  a  number  of  children  from  the  University 
community.  We  have  not  enough  data  to  show  whether  the  average  in- 
telligence in  the  Leal  School  really  would  rise  above  the  average  of  other 
school  populations  as  measured  by  mental  tests. 


Individual  Differences  in  Control  Group  99 

'average'  children  do  test  average  by  the  Stanford  Re- 
vision of  the  Binet-Simon  Scale  (98.4,  100.7  and  104.2), 
but  the  other  three  are  good  enough  to  qualify  for  our 
class  of  gifted  children  (I.  Q's  119,  125.2,  and  130,  re- 
spectively) ;  of  these,  the  first  is  already  pedagogically 
a  year  advanced  for  her  age  and  this  had  not  been  dis- 
counted by  the  teacher,  who  regards  her  as  average ;  the 
second  needs  to  be  studied  in  detail  before  an  explana- 
tion can  be  offered  ;*  the  third  is  the  No.  G3  already  de- 
scribed in  a  footnote,  p.  96. 

From  these  results  we  think  it  may  be  inferred  that 
pupils  classed  by  their  teachers  as  'dull'  are  not  very 
likely  to  be  found  on  test  to  be  average  or  superior.  On 
the  other  hand,  pupils  classed  by  their  teachers  as  '  aver- 
age' may  quite  well  be  of  superior  intelligence,  while, 
as  we  have  already  shown  in  our  previous  sections,  pupils 
classed  by  their  teachers  as  '  gifted '  may  quite  well  be  of 
only  average  intelligence.  May  we  not  say,  then,  that 
if  psychological  clinics  or  mental  examiners  are  needed 
for  selecting  dull  and  stupid  children,  as  most  persons 
agree,  then  a  fortiori  they  are  an  essential  prerequisite 
for  selecting  gifted  children? 


♦Another  interesting  bit  of  material  for  'case-study.'  This  boy  is  11 
years,  3  months,  old  with  a  mental  age  of  14  years,  1  month.  In  individual 
tests  he  is  quite  superior,  but  his  records  in  group  tests  are  only  average. 
His  movements  are  slow,  and  he  seems  to  be  confused  by  the  speed  limits 
in  group  tests.  It  is  possible  also  that  he  fails  to  do  his  best  save  under 
the  urge  of  direct  personal  contact.  He  is  slow  in  speech,  yet  uncommonly 
quick  in  reasoning  to  correct  conclusions.  He  shows  good  practical  judg- 
ment, is  self-possessed,  and  is  competent  in  manual  arts.  His  teacher, 
however,  declares  his  school  work  shows  nothing  above  average. 


Chapter  VIII 

CHOICE  OF  TESTS  FOR  SELECTING  GIFTED 
PUPILS 

A.       METHOD   OF   MAKING   THE   CHOICE 

It  might  be  possible  to  figure  the  correlation  between 
the  score  attained  in  most  of  onr  mental  and  educational 
tests  and  the  school  grade  or  other  indication  of  school 
performance  attained  by  all  the  pupils  under  observa- 
tion. The  method  we  have  adopted,  however,  is  to  com- 
pare the  outcome  of  the  tests  in  the  Special  Classes  with 
that  in  the  Control  Classes  of  like  school  grade.  The 
argument  is :  tests  in  which  the  average  or  median  per- 
formance of  the  Special  Classes  exceeds  decidedly  that 
of  the.  corresponding  Control  Classes  are  the  best,  other 
things  (like  ease  of  administration,  of  preparing  equiva- 
lent material,  of  scoring,  etc.)  being  equal.  A  compar- 
ison of  this  sort  is  probably  more  satisfactory,  where  the 
object  is  to  select  tests  that  shall  divide  a  group  of  pu- 
pils into  two  groups,  than  the  figuring  of  coefficients  of 
correlation — however  precise  these  might  be  arithmeti- 
cally. 

The  reader  needs,  perhaps,  to  be  reminded  at  the 
outset  that  we  make  this  comparison  under  conditions 
unfavorable  to  the  mental  tests,  for  this  reason.  We 
have  already  demonstrated  that  in  our  Special  Group 
there  are  some  eight  or  ten  pupils  that  should  have  been 
left  in  the  Control  Group  and  that  there  are  in  the  Con- 
trol Group  some  eight  or  ten  pupils  that  should  have 
been  placed  in  the  Special  Group.  Strictly  speaking, 
then,  it  would  be  legitimate    to    reconstitute    the    two 

100 


Selecting  Gifted  Pupils  101 

groups  before  testing  the  diagnostic  value  of  our  various 
tests;  we  have  not  done  this,  partly  because  the  im- 
provement in  our  results  would  hardly  repay  the  ex- 
penditure of  time  and  energy,  partly  because  we  can  tell 
by  inspection  of  individual  tests  whether  the  gifted  pu- 
pils in  the  Control  Group  surpass  the  average  pupils 
mistakenly  placed  in  our  Special  Group,  partly  because 
hypercritical  readers  might  say  that  we  altered  the  mem- 
bership of  our  groups  to  suit  our  test  results  and  then 
demonstrated  a  correspondence  between  the  two! 

In  making  the  comparison  between  the  average  per- 
formance of  the  Special  Group  with  the  average  per- 
formance of  the  Control  Group,  the  question  arose ;  how 
may  the  various  tests  be  brought  to  a  common  denomi- 
nator? Comparison  in  terms  of  'points'  or  'units'  of 
scoring  is  out  of  the  question,  since  a  unit  in  one  test  is 
coarser  than  a  unit  in  another.  Similarly,  comparison 
in  terms  of  percentiles  confronts  the  difficulty  that  the 
stretch  from  one  percentile  to  another  means  different 
amounts  of  achievement  in  different  portions  of  the 
range  of  scores.  We  have,  accordingly,  transferred  the 
percentile  distributions  into  terms  of  multiples  of  the 
standard  deviation  by  methods  already  described  in  this 
report  and  have  drawn  various  graphs  in  which  the  de- 
gree to  which  the  average  of  the  Special  Group  deviates 
from  the  average  of  the  Control  Group  in  each  of  27  tests 
is  thus  translated  into  actual  distances — inches  and  frac- 
tions of  inches.  By  direct  measurement  of  these  graphs 
we  are  able  to  compare  one  test  with  another  in  units  of 
efficiency  in  separating  the  Special  from  the  Control 
Groups. 

Several  comparisons  are  possible.  We  should  most 
naturally  compare  the  tests  with  one  another  in  efficien- 


102  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

cy  in  separating  the  Special  Fifth  from  the  Control 
Fifth  and  Special  Sixth  from  the  Control  Sixth.  It  is 
also  instructive  to  see  how  they  separate  the  Special  Fifth 
from  the  Control  Sixth  (since  it  is  proposed  to  have  most 
of  the  pupils  in  the  special  Fifth  make  a  double  promo- 
tion and  thus  work  in  the  same  classroom  as  the  Control 
Sixth.) 

We  have  instituted  still  another  basis  of  comparison, 
and  it  needs  a  few  words  of  explanation.  The  Control 
Groups  contain  a  number  of  children  who  do  such  poor 
work  that  they  ought  really  to  be  in  some  lower  school 
grade;  these  children  do  not  constitute  typical  5th-  or 
6th-grade  material;  their  presence  lowers  the  average 
score  of  the  Control  Classes  and  augments  unnaturally 
the  difference  between  their  standing  and  that  of  the 
Special  Classes.  To  our  way  of  thinking,  this  objection 
has  little  or  no  weight,  not  at  least  unless  we  are  per- 
mitted to  take  out  of  the  Special  Classes  those  that  failed 
of  double  promotion.  However,  to  load  the  dice  against 
our  tests  and  avoid  any  hint  of  favoring  them,  we  have 
figured  average  (or  median)  scores  for  the  Control  Fifth 
and  the  Control  Sixth  after  taking  from  them  all  chil- 
dren who  were  not  promoted  to  the  grade  above  in  June, 
1917,  and  we  have  contrasted  these  "Corrected  Control 
Classes"  with  our  uncorrected  Special  Classes.* 

To  return  to  the  comparison  of  the  tests  with  one 
another :  we  have  measured  the  efficiency  of  the  27  tests 
that  were  given  to  all  the  groups  in  separating  Special 
Fifth  from  Control  Fifth,  Special  Sixth  from  Control 
Sixth,  Special  Fifth  from  Control  Sixth,  Special  Fifth 


*Tho  change  thus  affected  is  curiously  little.  The  median  of  the  per- 
centiles attained  in  27  tests  by  the  Special  Fifth  is  68.83,  by  the  Control 
Fifth  41.25,  by  the  Corrected  Control  Fifth  43.83;  similarly, 'for  the  sixth 
grade  the  figures  are  60.83,   39.77   and  45.50,  respectively. 


Selecting  Gifted  Pupils  103 

from  Corrected  Control  Sixth,  and  we  have  ranked  these 
27  tests  in  order  of  merit  for  effecting  each  of  these  sep- 
arations. Without  stopping  to  present  the  array  of 
numerical  figures  that  have  resulted,  we  summarize  by 
saying  that  at  least  eight  tests  and  probably  a  ninth  can 
claim  first-class  rank  in  separating  the  Special  Classes 
from  the  Control  Classes :  nine  can  be  deemed  of  medium 
and  nine  of  practically  no  value  for  this  purpose. 

VALUE    Or    VARIOUS    GROUP   TESTS    FOR    DISCOVERING    GIFTED    CHILDREN 

A.  Of  High  Value  for  Separating  the   Special  from  the  Control  Group 

1.  Thurstone  Punched  Holes 

2.  Trabue  B  and  C 

3.  Trabue  J  and  K 

4.  Woody-McCall   Arithmetic   I 

5.  Woody-McCall  Arithmetic  II 

6.  Steacy  Drawing,  41-100 

7.  Equivalent  Proverbs 

8.  Bonser  Reasoning  III,  V  and  VI 

9.  Whipple   Lincoln    (deferred   recall) 

B.  Of  Medium  Value  for  Separating  the  Special  from  the  Control  Group 

10.  Ventilation   Commission   Vocabulary 

11.  Thorndike  Alpha  for  Understanding  of  Sentences 

12.  Final   Multiplication   Practice 

13.  Bonser  Reasoning  I  and  II 

14.  Whipple  Marble  Statue    (immediate  recall) 

15.  Thorndike  Visual  Vocabulary 

16.  Punctuation 

17.  Drawing  a  Wagon  from  Object 

18.  Thurstone  Reasoning 

C.  Of  No  Value  for  Separating  the  Special  from  the  Control  Group 

19.  Steacy  Drawing  Construction,  1-40 

20.  Completion  of  Number  Series 

21.  Thurstone  Flag 

22.  Whipple  Word  Building 

23.  Whipple  Lincoln   (immediate  recall) 

24.  Initial  Multiplication  Practise 

25.  Drawing  Horse  from  Memory 

26.  Thurstone  Hand 

27.  Thurstone   Spatial   Relations 

Comments  on  this  outcome  will  not  be  amiss.  The 
most  surprising  outcome  is  the  preeminent  place  ac- 
corded the  Punched  Holes  test  by  every  method  of  calcu- 
lation. Dr.  Thurstone  classed  it  with  his  other  spatial 
relations  tests,  but  it  appears  to  put  a  premium  upon 
general  intelligence.  It  will  be  of  interest  to  know  wheth- 


104  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

er  the  test  will  serve  a  similarly  useful  purpose  with 
pupils  of  other  ages  and  grades. 

The  Trabue  tests  would  be  expected  to  show  a  good 
correlation  with  general  intelligence,  as  completion  tests 
in  general  have  done  in  the  past. 

The  Equivalent  Proverbs  and  Bonser  III,  V  and  VI 
tests  all  stress  ability  to  see  relationships  verbally  ex- 
pressed. 

The  "Woody-McCall  Mixed  Fundamentals  are  tests 
of  an  educational  activity — ability  to  compute — with  the 
feature  of  compelling  the  selection  of  the  right  process 
for  each  problem :  their  place  in  our  series  is  higher  than 
we  anticipated. 

The  Steacy  Drawing  Construction  41-100  is  said  by 
Steacy  to  be  a  good  test  of  general  intelligence;  it  ap- 
pears to  demand  close  observation,  ability  to  reason 
about  concrete  things  and  ability  to  execute  one's  ideas 
with  a  pencil.  The  two  highest  scores  in  this  test  were 
pupils  with  I.  Q.  's  of  141  and  167. 

Note  that  the  only  'logical  memory'  test  that  was 
tried  with  all  pupils  for  both  immediate  and  deferred 
recall  finds  a  place  in  the  'high  value'  group,  when 
scored  for  deferred  recall,  but  is  of  no  value  when  scored 
for  immediate  recall;  also  that  Marble  Statue  (imme- 
diate, recall)  is  in  the  'medium  value'  group.  One  would 
infer,  then,  that  the  recall  of  the  comparatively  simple 
Lincoln  story  directly  after  hearing  it,  is  relatively  easy 
for  all  pupils  of  these  grades;  whereas  the  recall  two 
weeks  later  is  hard  enough  to  'tease  out'  the  competent 
pupils.  The  somewhat  more  complex  Marble  Statue 
story  is  hard  enough  to  be  of  medium  value  with  imme- 
diate recall;  it  is  unfortunate  that  we  were  unable  to 
get  data  on  its  efficiency  with  deferred  recall. 


Selecting  Gifted  Pupils  105 

Similarly,  the  intial  performance  in  the  Multiplica- 
tion Practise  test  does  not  separate  the  two  groups, 
whereas  in  the  final  test  the  Special  Classes  are  enough 
superior  to  give  the  test  medium  efficiency  in  separating 
the  groups.  From  this  we  might  infer  that  a  brief  test 
of  improvement  under  practise  ought  to  be  included  in 
a  combination  of  tests  for  separating  gifted  pupils;  un- 
fortunately, we  lack  comparative  data  to  determine 
whether  the  Thurstone  substitution  test  would  be  service- 
able in  that  manner. 

Of  the  tests  of  no  value  for  our  purpose,  several  quite 
clearly  test  specialized  forms  of  ability,  e.  g.,  the  Spatial 
Relation  test,  Flag  test  and  Hand  test  of  Thurstone  and 
the  Drawing  from  Memory.  Some  are  too  easy,  e.  g.,  the 
Steacy  Drawing,  1-40,  the  Immediate  Memory  for  the 
Lincoln  story,  while  it  seems  likely  that  tho.  Completion 
of  Number  Series  is  too  difficult  for  these  grades.  The  low 
place  accorded  Word-Building  agrees  with  my  inability 
to  discover  correlations  between  it  and  the  class  stand- 
ing of  grammar-school  pupils  at  Ithaca,  N.  Y. 

Of  the  tests  of  medium  merit  for  our  purpose,  five 
evidently  test  abilities  in  which  the  pupils  in  these  grades 
are  more  or  less  similarly  trained  by  the  school,  viz.,  the 
two  Vocabulary  tests,  the  Understanding  of  Passages 
Read,  Punctuation  and  probably  the  Drawing  of  a 
Wagon.  The  Thurstone  Reasoning  test  is  surely  much 
too  hard  for  children  of  these  grades. 

In  all  this  discussion,  the  reader  will  please  bear  in 
mind,  we  have  been  limiting  ourselves  to  the  merits  of 
group  tests,  and  to  only  those  group  tests  that  we  happen 
to  have  applied  to  both  Special  Group  and  Control 
Group.  In  the  presentation  of  the  results  of  the  tests 
themselves,  we  have  intimated  that  several  that  are  not 


106  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

mentioned  in  our  27  above  are  doubtless  worth  further 
investigation.  The  point  is  emphasized  further  in  the 
next  chapter  of  this  report  a  propos  of  the  Winch  Com- 
position test.  We  have  also  called  attention  to  the  very 
useful  results  we  obtained  from  several  of  our  individual 
tests — notably,  of  course,  the  Binet  tests,  and  also  the 
Analogies,  the  Hard  Opposites,  the  Painted  Cube  and 
others. 

B.      RECOMMENDED  PROGRAM  OF  TESTS 

Omitting  individual  tests  of  all  sorts  and  omitting  all 
reference  to  those  of  our  group  tests  that  were  not  ap- 
plied to  the  Total  Group,  we  recommend  that  pupils  of 
the  5th  and  6th  grade  be  selected  for  inclusion  in  special 
classes  for  the  gifted  by  the  use  of  the  following  group 
tests,  for  each  of  which  is  stated  the  approximate  time 
needed  for  its  administration : 

Approximate 
Order  Test  Minutes  Needed 

1  Woody-McCall  Mixed  Fundamentals  I        23 

2  Trabue  Language  Scales  B  and  C  17 

3  Thurstone  Substitution  Test  15 

4  Bonser  Reasoning  Tests,  III,  V,  VI  20 

5  Thurstone  Punched  Holes  Test  13 

6  Equivalent  Proverbs,  No.  VI  23 


Total        111 

If  more  than  2  hours  could  be  used,  add : 

7  Whipple  Marble  Statue  (deferred  recall) 

8  Steacy  Drawing  Construction,  41-100  (in  part) 
To  facilitate  the  use  of  these  six  tests  I  have  pre- 
pared a  special  arrangement  of  them  in  the  form  of  a 
booklet  of  16  pages  with  all  necessary  instructions  to 
the  pupils  and  with  appropriate  spaces  for  recording 


Selecting  Gifted  Pupils  107 

personal  and  scholastic  data  and  for  comparing  the  re- 
sults of  each  pupil  with  the  standards  set  for  gifted 
pupils  in  the  5th  and  6th  grades.  One  of  these  booklets 
is  needed  for  each  pupil  tested.  Complete  instructions 
for  the  examiner  are  supplied  in  a  separate  booklet.* 

Following  this  use  of  the  group  tests  we  deem  it 
advisable  to  give  the  pupils  provisionally  selected,  an 
individual  examination,  preferably  by  the  Binet  tests — 
this,  both  in  order  to  give  the  examiner  an  opportunity 
to  get  acquainted  with  each  child  and  also  in  order  to 
confirm  the  provisional  diagnosis  and  to  obtain  data  that 
may  be  directly  compared  with  the  scores  for  general  in- 
telligence that  have  been  already  obtained  for  thousands 
of  school  children. 

C.      AN    ILLUSTRATIVE    CASE 

Let  us  illustrate  our  ideas  by  supposing  that  a  cer- 
tain city  school  system  has  400  fourth-grade  (or  fifth- 
grade)  pupils  who  are  taught  in  10  classes  of  40  each. 
Let  us  suppose  that  it  is  planned  to  select  from  these 
pupils  20  to  form  a  special  class  in  the  fifth  (or  sixth) 
grade  the  coming  year.  Such  a  class,  being  limited  to 
the  top  5  per  cent.,  would  theoretically  comprise  pupils 
with  I.  Q.'s  of  120  or  above  and  would  be  much  more 
competent,  as  a  class,  than  the  Special  Class  we  formed 
at  Urbana.    We  would  proceed  thus: 

(1)  Call  together  the  teachers  of  these  classes  and 
their  principals ;  explain  to  them  the  intent  to  organize 


*These  materials  will  be  sold  by  the  Public  School  Publishing  Com- 
pany, Bloomington,  Illinois,  and  by  the  C.  H.  Stoelting  Co.,  dealers  in 
psychological  materials,  3047  Carroll  Ave.,  Chicago,  Illinois.  School  offi- 
cials who  desire  to  have  these  or  other  forms  of  intelligence  tests  or 
educational  measurements  applied  to  pupils  or  schools  by  competent  exam- 
iners working  under  my  personal  direction  can  usually  make  arrangements 
for  this  service  by  communicating  directly  with  me  at  the  Division  of  Ap- 
plied  Psychology,   Carnegie   Institute   of  Technology,   Pittsburgh,    Pa. 


108  Classes  fob  Gifted  Children 

the  "Special  Class"  or  "Opportunity  Class"  or  "Ac- 
celerating Class"  or  whatever  name  is  officially  decided 
on.  Request  each  teacher,  in  conference  with  her  prin- 
cipal, to  select  the  25  per  cent,  (here  10  pupils  per  class) 
that  would  presumably  profit  best  by  inclusion  in  the 
new  class.  Make  clear  (a)  that  the  names  of  10  pupils 
are  wanted  from  each  teacher,  even  though  fewer  than 
10  would  presumably  profit  in  the  Special  Class,  (b) 
that  the  possession  of  a  good  degree  of  'general  intel- 
ligence' is  more  significant  than  the  getting  of  high 
marks,  so  that  competence  outside  the  classroom  ought 
to  be  taken  into  account,  and  (c)  that  pupils  peculiarly 
good  in  special  directions  must  be  considered  carefully 
to  decide  whether  their  ability  in  other  directions  is  good 
enough  to  warrant  their  inclusion. 

(2)  Call  these  100  pupils  together  and  give  them 
the  six  tests  just  mentioned  (Woody-McCall  I,  Trabue 
B  and  C,  Thurstone  Substitution,  Bonser  III,  V  and  VI, 
Thurstone  Punched  Holes  and  Equivalent  Proverbs  VI). 

(3)  Give  an  individual  examination  to  the  50  pupils 
scoring  highest  in  these  group  tests  or,  if  preferred,  to 
all  of  those  pupils  who  in  three  or  more  of  the  six  tests 
score  better  than  the  lower  critical  scores  specified  in 
the  test  booklets.  For  this  individual  examination  we 
have  found  useful  the  Stanford  Revision  of  the  Binet- 
Simon  tests  and  also  the  analogies  test  given  by  the 
individual  method  as  described  in  Chapter  III. 

(4)  Let  the  examiner  now  arrange  the  50  pupils,  in 
the  light  of  these  individual  tests  and  of  the  group  tests, 
in  order  of  their  mental  ability  and  then  select  for  the 
room  by  beginning  with  No.  1  and  considering  whether 
that  child's  physical  health,  home  conditions  or  place  of 
residence  would  in  any  way  prevent  him  from  getting 
the.  fullest  benefit  from  the  Special  Class.     Eliminate 


Selecting  Gifted  Pupils  109 

those  who  are  frail,  who  are  already  suffering  from 
'forcing'  either  in  or  out  of  school,  whose  parents  object 
to  their  joining  the  class  or  who  live  where  they  cannot 
reach  the  Special  Room  without  too  lengthy  transporta- 
tion. Continue  until  20  are  found  who  answer  the  re- 
quirements, i 

This  illustrative  case  can  be  modified  to  meet  the  situ- 
ation. We  have  assumed  that  the  ideal  class  for  gifted 
children  would  contain  20  pupils,  all  of  one  grade,  the 
top  5  per  cent.,  with  I.  Q.'s  of  120  and  up.  In  practice, 
very  likely  nearly  as  efficient  work  could  be  done  with  a 
class  of  30  or  40  pupils ;  and  again,  it  would  be  profitable, 
if  necessary  to  get  sufficient  pupils,  to  select  the  upper  10 
per  cent.  (I.  Q.'s  of  115  and  up)  instead  of  only  the  up- 
per 5  per  cent.,  or  to  place  in  a  single  classroom,  as  we 
did  at  Urbana,  15  5th-grade  and  15  6th-grade  pupils. 
On  this  basis,  it  will  be  seen  that  a  room  such  as  here 
described  could  be  profitably  established  in  a  school  sys- 
tem having  150  pupils  to  select  from  in  each  of  these 
grades. 


Chapter  IX 

CHOICE   OF   TESTS  FOR  DIFFERENTIATING 

ABILITIES  WITHIN  A  GROUP  OF  GIFTED 

PUPILS 

Are  the  tests  that  serve  best  to  select  the  top  20  per 
cent,  of  the  school  population  in  the  5th  and  6th  grades 
also  those  that  serve  best  to  differentiate  between  the 
abilities  of  the  pupils  within  this  20  per  cent.  ?  An  affir- 
mative answer  cannot  be  assumed  forthwith.  Moreover, 
in  this  investigation  we  chance  to  have  applied  various 
tests  to  the  selected  group  that  we  did  not  apply  to  the 
general  school  population,  so  that  our  range  of  possibil- 
ities is  now  widened. 

We  have  tried  two  different  bases  for  grouping  the 
members  of  our  Special  Group  for  comparison  with  the 
various  tests;  (1)  the  outcome  of  the  careful  individual 
Binet  examination,  (2)  the  teacher's  estimated  rank  or- 
der of  intelligence  (June  estimate). 

Within  our  Special  Fifth,  when  grouped  by  Binet 
outcomes,  the  best  five  pupils  have  an  average  I.  Q.  of 
136.7;  the  middle  five  of  115.7;  the  lowest  five  of  105.5. 
Examining  the  averages  for  the.  same  groups  in  34  tests, 
we  find  that  the  tests  that  yield  most  nearly  the  same 
division  as  the  Binet  are  the  following:  the  two  vocab- 
ulary tests,  Bonser  Reasoning  I  and  II,  Winch  Compo- 
sition, Thurstone  Flag  test  and  Equivalent  Proverbs — 
a  list  that  bears  little  resemblance  to  that  serving  best 
to  separate  the  Special  from  the  Control  Group. 

Second,  when  the  Special  Fifth  is  divided  into  three 
sections  of  five  pupils  each  in  accordance  with  their 

no 


Differentiating  Abilities  111 

intelligence  as  estimated  by  their  teacher  on  June  1st, 
1917,  those  of  the  34  tests  that  accord  most  closely  with 
this  division  of  the  pupils  are:  Thorndike  Scale  Alpha, 
Trabue  Scales  B  and  C,  Winch  Composition,  the  Draw- 
ing of  the  Horse  and  of  the  Wagon,  the  Steacy  Drawing 
Tests  and  the  Thurstone  Hand  and  Thurstone  Flag  tests. 

Third,  a  similar  study  gave,  for  correspondence  with 
the  same  teacher's  estimate  of  intelligence  in  the  Special 
Sixth,  the  following:  Woody-McCall  I  and  II,  Bonser 
Reasoning  I  and  II,  Scale  Alpha,  Trabue  B,  C,  J,  and  "K, 
Whipple  Word-Building,  Winch  Composition,  Steacy 
Drawing  41-100,  Thurstone  Punched  Holes,  Equivalent 
Proverbs. 

These  results  are  somewhat  conflicting.  We  should 
expect  them  to  be,  because  the  task  of  differentiating 
within  a  group  of  pupils  already  selected  as  being  all  of 
them  superior  to  their  mates  in  school  work,  is  more  diffi- 
cult, both  for  the  tests  and  for  the  teacher,  than  the  task 
of  selecting  the  group  as  a  whole  from  the  total  group, 
and  these  sub-groups  are  so  small  that  a  special  ability 
might  by  chance  predominate  in  one.  (We  have  already 
commented  on  the  discrepancies  between  the  teacher's 
rank-orders  made  in  November  and  June.*)  However, 
we  may  surmise  that  certain  tests  are  more  effective  than 
others  in  differentiating  within  a  group  of  bright  chil- 
dren and  that  among  these  tests  are:  Winch  Composi- 
tion, Equivalent  Proverbs;  Trabue  B  and  C,  Bonser 
Reasoning  I  and  II,  Thorndike  Scale  Alpha  and  Steacy 
Drawing  41-100.  These  six  tests  practically  always  sep- 
arate the  best  five  from  the  remaining  ten,  both  in  our 
Special  Fifth  and  in  our  Special  Sixth. 

*Page  82. 


112  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

The  one  most  valuable  test  of  the  six  is  clearly  the 
Winch  Composition  test ;  when  compared  with  the  stand- 
ards for  composition  for  the  beginning  of  the  5th  grade, 
the  best  five  of  our  Special  Fifth  pupils  average  the  81st 
percentile ;  the  middle  five  average  the  72nd  percentile ; 
the  poorest  five,  the  39th  percentile.  Analogous  figures 
for  the  Special  Sixth  pupils  are  the  97th,  84th  and  54th 
percentiles,  respectively.  It  is  a  matter  of  great  regret 
that  we  have  no  data  for  this  test  from  our  Control 
Group.  One  obvious  drawback  to  the  use  of  the  test  is 
the  labor  that  scoring  involves. 

It  is  also  of  interest  to  note  that  tests  of  memory  for 
ideas  and  of  improvement  due  to  practise  do  not  serve 
to  differentiate  the  pupils  within  the  Special  Group ;  on 
the  contrary,  the  most  effective  tests  for  that  purpose 
are  tests  of  ability  to  use  language  effectively,  to  reason 
clearly  and  to  comprehend  what  one  reads. 


Chapter  X 

THE  ADAPTATION  OF  METHODS  OF  TEACHING 
TO  FIT  THE  NEEDS  OF  GIFTED  CHILDREN 

Coordinate  with  the  experimental  study  of  the  means 
of  selecting  gifted  pupils,  observations  were  made  upon 
the  reaction  of  the  selected  pupils  in  the  classroom.  This 
portion  of  our  investigation  was  intrusted  mainly  to  Dr. 
T.  S.  Henry,  now  of  the  instructing  staff  of  the  State 
Normal  School,  Kalamazoo,  Michigan,  from  whose  report 
we  have  drawn  most  of  the  material  for  this  chapter. 

In  the  various  American  cities  there  have  been  de- 
vised flexible  promotion  schemes  (ungraded  classes, 
grade  skipping,  promotion  by  subject,  quarterly  promo- 
tions, etc.)  that  favor  to  a  greater  or  less  extent  the 
school  progress  of  gifted  children.  The  educational  pub- 
lic is  familiar,  for  instance,  with  the  '  plans '  worked  out 
at  St.  Louis ;  Elizabeth,  N.  J. ;  Pueblo,  Colo. ;  Cambridge, 
Mass.;  Odebolt  and  LeMars,  Iowa;  Portland,  Oregon; 
North  Denver ;  Santa  Barbara ;  Chicago ;  Newton,  Mass. ; 
Woburn,  Mass. ;  Arlington,  Mass. ;  and  elsewhere.* 

Dr.  Henry  has  studied  the  systems  in  vogue  in  these 
cities  and  has  gathered  information  by  correspondence 
with  superintendents  in  numerous  other  cities  where  all 
sorts  of  variants  and  combinations  of  the  better-known 
plans  have  been  evolved  to  meet  the  local  situation,  and 
it  is  to  be  hoped  that  this  material!  may  sometime  be 
published  in  full. 


*See  the  school  reports  of  these  cities,  also  the  publications  of  CJerk, 
Holmes,  McDonald,  Van  Sickle  and  others,  listed  in  the  bibliography  at 
the  end  of  this  book. 

tA  doctor's  dissertation  for  the  University  of  Illinois,  1917,  entitled 
"Classroom  Problems  in  the  Education  of  Gifted  Children." 

113 


114  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

Information  has  also  been  gathered  concerning  the 
operation  of  the  special  classes  for  gifted  pupils  that  have 
been  established  at  Baltimore;  Indianapolis;  Worcester, 
Mass.;  Cincinnati;  Harrisburg;  Louisville;  Boston;  New 
York  City ;  Lead,  S.  D. ;  Framingham,  Mass. ;  Lincoln, 
111. ;  Manchester,  England ;  Charlottenburg,  Germany ; 
and  elsewhere.* 

In  the  experimental  room  at  Urbana  there  was  prac- 
tically continuous  observation  of  the  work  of  the  select- 
ed pupils  by  one  or  more  of  the  investigators,  and  this 
observation  was  supplemented  by  a  somewhat  elaborate 
practice  experiment  in  multiplication  (see  pp.  53-54) 
to  measure  the  effectiveness  of  systematic  drill,  and  also 
oy  what  might  be  termed  'experimental  teaching'  by  Dr. 
Henry,  himself,  who  in  this  way  compared  the  manner 
in  which  these  pupils  received  and  assimilated  a  given 
lesson  unit  with  the  response  that  would  be  obtained 
from  the  usual  fifth  or  sixth-grade  class.     Dr.  Henry, 

*It  is  true  that  it  is  quite  difficult  to  ascertain  just  what  cities  do 
maintain  special  classes  for  gifted  children.  R.  A.  F.  McDonald  published 
in  1915  a  doctor's  dissertation  from  Teachers  College,  Columbia  University, 
in  which  is  printed  a  list  of  twenty-two  cities  that  reported  "special  schools 
or  classes  for  exceptionally  gifted  pupils  in  their  public  school  system." 
Dr.  Henry,  at  my  suggestion,  got  into  direct  communication  with  several 
of  these  twenty-two  cities  and  found  that  one  of  them  only  occasionally 
promoted  individual  pupils;  one  had  a  room  for  dull  but  never  for  bright 
children;  one  had  a  'mixed'  room  for  both  dull  and  gifted  (I);  and  two 
gave  individual  coaching  to  pupils  who  were  trying  for  special  promotions. 
It  is  unfortunate  that  misleading  and  inaccurate  statements  should  have 
crept  into  such  influential  publications  as  the  Teachers  College  Con- 
tributions to  Education.  A  still  more  impossible  statement  is  that  made 
by  Miss  Elizabeth  Woods  in  the  March,  1917,  issue  of  Educational  Admin- 
istration and  Supervision,  when  she  states  that  forty-fire  cities  have  classes 
formed  of  gifted  children  only — a  statement  that  I  judge  can  be  construed 
as  accurate  only  if  any  rapidly  moving  group  in  a  system  where  flexible 
promotion  prevails  is  characterized  as  a  "special  class." 

I  had  several  years  ago  the  experience  of  soliciting  from  the  Bureau 
of  Education  at  Washington  a  list  of  cities  making  special  provision  for 
"pupils  of  exceptional  ability."  When  I  discovered  that  almost  every  one 
of  the  more  than  sixty  cities  to  which  T  was  referred  made  provision  for 
subnormal  pupils  only,  and  wrote  to  that  effect,  to  the  Bureau,  I  was 
somewhat  startled  to  be  informed  that  "pupils  of  exceptional  ability"  meant 
dull  and  backward  pupils  otherwise  known  as  abnormal!  I  suppose  by  the 
same  construction  "men  of  exceptional  wealth"  would  be  found  in  the 
almshouses! 

This  terminological  vagueness  is  only  another  symptom  of  the  scant 
attention  that  has  been  paid  as  yet  to  the  needs  of  .the  gifted  pupils. 


Adaptation  of  Methods  115 

Miss  Coy  and  the  writer  also  devoted  some  time  to  observ- 
ing the  very  successful  "Opportunity  Class"  at  Louis- 
ville, Ky.,  and  in  discussing  with  the  teachers  there  and 
in  other  special  rooms  for  superior  children,  the  means 
of  adapting  methods  of  classroom  instruction  to  the  needs 
of  bright  children.* 

From  these  sources  of  observation  and  information 
we  have  assembled  a  number  of  conclusions!  and  rec- 
ommendations concerning  the  organization  and  conduct 
of  special  rooms  for  gifted  children. 

There  are  certain  ones  of  these  recommendations  that 
apply  to  any  schoolroom  but  that,  nevertheless,  take  on, 
in  our  opinion,  an  added  significance  when  the  room  is 
devoted  to  the  instruction  of  gifted  children.  These 
recommendations  will  be  stated  first  and  then  those  rec- 
ommendations that  apply  more  specifically  to  classes  for 
the  gifted. 

A.      RECOMMENDATIONS,    PERTINENT   TO   ANY    CLASSROOM, 

THAT  ASSUME  ADDED  IMPORTANCE  IN  CLASSROOMS 

FOR    GIFTED    CHILDREN 

1.  The  teacher  of  a  special  room  for  gifted  children 
should  possess  a  large  fund  of  general  information. 

It  would  be  trite  to  assert  that  any  teacher  would 
succeed  the  better  for  being  well  informed.  Our  point 
is  here  that  a  group  of  gifted  children  exhibit  an  unusual 
range  of  interests  and  wealth  and  variety  of  mental  asso- 
ciation; they  have  points  of  contact  not  so  often  avail- 


*In  the  published  accounts  of  classes  for  gifted  children  there  is  con- 
siderable attention  to  aims,  results,  methods  of  organization,  and  study 
programs,  but  there  has  been  little  said  concerning  the  pedagogy  of  these 
classes.  The  reader  may  consult  the  articles  by  Flora  Unrich,  Martha 
Adler  and  Rose  Patterson  (see  bibliography)  for  some  positive  suggestions 
on  the  pedagogical  aspects  of  the  problem. 

tMost  of  these  conclusions  are  quoted  with  some  paraphrasing  from 
Dr.  Henry's  thesis. 


116  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

able  in  the  instruction  of  ordinary  children  and  that 
ought  obviously  to  be  capitalized.  One  of  the  first  things 
usually  said  by  teachers  of  these  rooms  to  whom  we  have 
talked  is :  "  These  children  certainly  keep  me  guessing. ' ' 
Or:  "I  have  to  use  my  spare  time  stocking  up  on  infci- 
mation  so  as  to  anticipate  a  reasonable  fraction  of  their 
questions. ' ' 

2.  The  teacher  should  have  had  adequate  foundation 
in  the  theory  and  practice  of  teaching. 

Here,  again,  we  state  a  desideratum  of  any  teacher. 
But  with  the  gifted  pupils  the  ordinary  stock  methods 
will  not  do.  To  get  really  efficient  instruction  there 
must  be  not  merely  definite  plans  for  work' that  imply 
sound  professional  knowledge,  but  also  ability  on  the 
part  of  the  teacher  to  grasp  .and  to  execute  adaptations 
and  modifications  of  method  that  are  suited  to  the  edu- 
cation of  gifted  children. 

3.  The  teacher  should  be  characterized  by  energy, 
enthusiasm  and  an  inspiring  personality. 

Good  traits,  these,  for  any  teacher!  But  it  strikes 
us  that  they  are  peculiarly  needed  by  the  teacher  of 
gifted  children,  who  have  an  unusual  capacity  for  work 
that  often  needs  to  be  stimulated  and  inspired  if  it  is  to 
be  enlisted  in  the  daily  work  of  the  school.  One  of  the 
main  arguments  for  the  segregation  of  the  gifted  pupils 
is  precisely  this :  only  by  segregation  can  they  be  brought 
to  exert  themselves  to  the  utmost,  to  develop  habits  of 
industry  and  by  competition  and  example  to  learn  the 
rewards  of  persistent  effort.  Fully  to  gain  these  ends 
a  teacher  of  unusual  energy  and  stimulating  capacity  is 
wanted. 

4.  The  special  room  should  be  equipped  with  mov- 
able desks,  and  should  be  well  supplied  with  maps, 
charts,  globes,  pictures,  and  other  aids  to  study. 


Adaptation  of  Methods  117 

The  use  of  movable  desks  gives  much  more  freedom 
of  movement  to  the  pupils,  and  makes  possible  much 
greater  variety  in  conducting  the  exercises  of  the.  school. 
If  the  pupils  have  access  to  books  for  supplementary- 
reading,  to  maps,  globes,  and  other  illustrative  material, 
their  study  will  be  more  independent,  and  they  will  have 
better  opportunity  to  learn  how  to  work  for  themselves. 

5.  Emphasis  slwuld  he  placed  upon  the  development 
of  the  pupils'  initiative. 

A  prominent  feature  in  the  education  of  bright  chil- 
dren is  the  increase  of  opportunity  for  the  exercise  of 
initiative  on  their  part,  with  a  consequent  insistence  up- 
on self-reliance  and  free  expression. 

6.  Much  use  should  he  made  of  the  "principle  of 
application." 

In  carrying  out  this  principle,  pupils  must  be  en- 
couraged in  all  possible  ways  to  make  immediate  and 
practical  application  of  what  they  have  learned,  in  the 
acquisition  of  new  knowledge  and  in  the  other  activi- 
ties of  the  schoolroom.  In  particular,  the  teacher  may 
often  very  advantageously  make  use  of  this  principle 
in  provision  for  review.  The  opportunities  in  this  di- 
rection are  greater  in  classes  of  gifted  pupils. 

7.  Instruction  shoidd  he  as  much  as  possible  hy 
hroad,  underlying  principles,  rather  than  hy  detached 
facts. 

This  is  an  important  principle  in  all  teaching,  but 
it  can  be  realized  to  a  much  greater  extent  with  bright 
children  than  with  ordinary  ones,  and  consequently  needs 
to  receive  greater  emphasis  in  their  instruction. 

8.  An  important  feature  of  the  teacher's  method  is 
the  development  of  a  proper  perspective  of  the  material 
of  instruction. 

This  implies  the  ability  to  estimate  the  relative  im- 
portance of  the  different  topics  and  pieces  of  subject 


118  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

matter  in  order  to  distribute  time  and  energy  properly 
among  them  and  to  insure  that  the  more  important  topics 
receive  the  greater  attention.  "We  have  gained  the  con- 
viction that  this  ability  to  maintain  and  to  develop  per- 
spective is  more  needed  in  the  instruction  of  gifted  chil- 
dren. 

B.      RECOMMENDATIONS   PERTAINING   SPECIFICALLY    TO 
CLASSROOMS  FOR  GIFTED  CHILDREN 

9.  The  enrollment  of  a  special  room  for  gifted  chil- 
dren should  represent  ordinarily  a  selection  of  approx- 
imately the  top  ten  per  cent,  of  the  general  school  popu- 
lation in  the  grades  that  are  to  be  represented. 

We  say  ' '  ordinarily  ten  per  cent. ' '  because  our  exper- 
iment shows  that  the  upper  ten  per  cent,  can  accomplish 
sufficiently  more  and  better  work  to  warrant  their  segre- 
gation. To  lower  the  standard,  say  to  fifteen  per  cent., 
would,  we  are  sure,  impair  the  working  efficiency  of  the 
segregated  group  and  lose  most  of  the  objects  for  which 
the  segregation  was  made.  On  the  other  hand,  when 
administrative  conditions  permit  the  raising  of  the 
standard,  say  to  five  per  cent.,  there  would  be  a  decided 
gain  in  homogeneity  within  the  group  and  a  decided 
augmentation  in  the  range,  rate  and  brilliancy  of  the 
work  accomplished.* 

*I  have  often  wondered  why  some  well-endowed  private  school  did  not 
raise  its  standards  of  admission  to  the  last  notch  and  convert  these  standards 
into  those  of  mental  ability.  Suppose,  for  instance,  a  school  that  would 
admit  no  pupil  whose  ability  was  not  as  good  as  the  "best  boy  in  one 
hundred,"  and  suppose  that  no  amount  of  money  or  'pull'  could  place  a 
boy  of  less  ability  inside  its  classrooms.  It  is  easy  to  predict  what  would 
happen.  Teaching  would  become  a  heavenly  delight;  the  best  instructors 
of  youth  would  clamor  for  a  place  on  the  faculty;  within  «  f ew  years  col- 
leges would  compete  for  the  product  of  the  school  and  its  reputation  would 
spread  far  and  near  as  the  place  where  the  brainiest  young  men  of  the 
country  were  produced.  Its  graduates  would  excel  wherever  they  went 
and  their  superior  achievement  would  be  attributed  by  the  unthinking 
public  to  some  unusual  superiority  of  instruction  that  could  be  gained  only 
in  that  school;  applications  for  admission  would  increase  until  the  school 
had  a  'waiting  list'  from  which  it  could  pick  and  choose  its  student  body 
to  suit  its  needs  and  purposes.  Is  there  anything  chimerical  about  this 
plan?  And  is  there  anything  undemocratic  or  snobbish  in  an  aristocracy 
of  brains? 


Adaptation  op  Methods  19 

10.  Sound  health  should  be  a  prerequisite  for  ad- 
mission to  classes  for  gifted  children. 

One  of  the  commonest  stock  objections  to  the  thesis 
that  gifted  children  ought  to  be  segregated  for  special 
instruction  is  that  this  process  will  undermine  their 
health  and  that  any  sort  of  forcing  is  unnatural  and  in- 
jurious. Doubtless  those  who  raise  this  objection  picture 
a  gifted  child  as  a  puny,  anemic,  'hot-house'  affair  with 
an  over-developed  brain  poorly  supported  by  an  under- 
nourished body.  We  have  not  encountered  these  freaks 
among  our  children.  However,  there  is  a  type  of  ner- 
vous child  who  has  undoubted  ability  but  whose  school 
work  is  a  perpetual  source  of  worry;  who  attains  his 
place  at  the  head  of  the  class  by  overwork  and  at  the 
sacrifice  of  physical  development.  These  children  are 
not  wanted  in  classes  for  the  gifted.  The  ordinary  every- 
day kind  of  gifted  child  can  pursue  the  work  of  the 
gifted  classes  serenely,  with  no  undue  strain,  with  persis- 
tent effort  yet  without  impairment  of  health.  He  feels 
better  if  kept  at  work  than  if  guarded  against  reasonable 
exercise  of  his  native  intelligence. 

11.  The  method  of  selecting  gifted  pupils  should  be 
by  mental  tests,  not  by  teachers'  estimates  of  the  pupils' 
ability  nor  by  school  administrators'  inferences  from 
school  marks. 

The  demonstration  of  the  truth  of  this  statement  has 
occupied  the  bulk  of  this  monograph  and  need  not  be 
summarized  again  here. 

12.  The  teacher  in  charge  of  a  special  room  should 
be  carried  along  with  it  in  its  advancement,  and  shoidd 
remain  with  it  as  long  as  it  retains  its  organization. 

This  arrangement  makes  for  economy  of  time,  in 
that  it  becomes  unnecessary  for  the  pupils,  at  the  begin- 


120  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

ning  of  each  year,  to  adjust  themselves  to  the  character- 
istics, methods,  and  requirements  of  a  new  teacher ;  nor 
is  any  time  lost  by  the  teacher  in  making  the  acquain- 
tance of  a  new  set  of  pupils.  It  also  permits  greater 
freedom  in  the  organization  of  subject  matter  from  year 
to  year  in  the  course..* 

13.  In  the  special  room  for  gifted  children,  drill 
should  be  decreased  by  about  50  per  cent. 

Correspondence  with  teachers  shows  this  to  be  a  prev- 
alent practice  in  rooms  of  this  kind,  and  corroborative 
evidence  has  been  furnished  by  the  work  of  our  own 
special  room.  Eesults  of  learning-tests  indicate  that 
practice  is  more  efficient  in  the  case  of  those  who  already 
possess  high  initial  ability.! 

14.  Likewise,  explanation  should  be  reduced  about 
50  per  cent,  in  amount,  and  needs  to  be  given  in  much  less 
detail  than  to  ordinary  pupils. 

This  is  also  the  common  practice  in  special  rooms  for 
gifted  pupils.  It  is  justified  by  the  quickness  with  which 
the  children  learn  and  by  their  greater  ability  in  perceiv- 
ing relationships. 

15.  The  teacher  of  the  special  room  for  bright  chil- 
dren need  pay  but  little  attention  to  discipline,  beyond 
seeing  to  it  that  the  pupils  have  work  enough  to  keep 
them  busy. 


*I  would  also  suggest  that  the  teacher  ought  to  keep  quite  full  notes 
of  the  daily  work  of  her  class,  with  critical  comments  thereon.  When  she 
relinquishes  her  first  set  of  gifted  pupils  and  begins  again  with  a  new 
group,  she  will  then  be  supplied  with  valuable  material  to  guide  her  work. 
Memoranda  of  this  sort  are  peculiarly  useful  in  the  absence  of  printed 
lesson  plans  and  daily  programs  that  will  fit  the  needs  of  these  special  classes. 
They  ought  to  make  a  contribution  worth  publication  for  the  aid  of  others 
in  this  work. 

tNote,  for  illustration,  the  drill  experiment  in  multiplication  described 
in  the  chapter  on  educational  tests.  Note  that  two  weeks'  drill  brought 
our  Special  Fifth,  which  at  the  time  of  the  experiment  had  done  about 
six  weeks  of  the  sixth-grade  work,  up  to  the  level  of  a  class  that  had  been 
doing  the  regular  sixth-grade  work  for  seven  months. 


Adaptation  of  Methods  121 

The  testimony  of  those  who  are  engaged  in  giving 
instruction  to  special  groups  of  bright  children  is  prac- 
tically unanimous  to  the  effect  that  no  disciplinary  trou- 
bles are  encountered.  While  bright  children  sometimes 
cause  trouble  in  ordinary  rooms,  because  of  their  lack 
of  employment,  when  they  are  placed  in  a  room  where 
they  have  plenty  of  work  to  occupy  their  attention,  and 
where  they  must  exert  themselves  to  keep  up  with  their 
fellows,  their  idleness  gives  place  to  industry,  and  they 
cease  to  give  any  trouble  on  the  score  of  conduct.  The 
only  recommendation  that  needs  to  be  made  upon  this 
point,  then,  is  that  the  teacher  see  to  it  that  the  pupils 
have  work  enough  to  occupy  their  time. 

16.  If  any  of  the  pupils  in  the  special  room  seem  to 
be  developing  egotistic  tendencies,  the  teacher  should  ap- 
ply the  'social  check.' 

Contrary  to  the  impression  entertained  by  some,  se- 
gregation of  superior  children  does  not  inevitably  de- 
velop in  them  undemocratic  ideas  and  attitudes.  Quite 
the  opposite;  in  fact,  there  is  more  opportunity  for  the 
development  of  the  feeling  of  superiority  on  the  part  of 
the  bright  cjiild  in  the  regular  room  than  in  the  special 
room.  Under  ordinary  conditions,  the  bright  child  stands 
out  conspicuously  above  his  fellows;  his  superiority  is 
acknowledged  by  them,  often  to  the  point  of  resentment, 
and  he  is  keenly  aware  of  it.  When  a  question  has  gone 
round  the  rest  of  the  class  without  receiving  an  answer, 
the  teacher  turns  to  him  with  an  air  of  finality  and  relief. 
Such  opportunity  for  display  does  not  come  to  the  child 
in  the  special  room,  for  here  he  is  among  real  competi- 
tors, and  in  place  of  being  always  in  the  lead  he  must 
often  exert  himself  to  keep  up  with  the  rest.  Of  course, 
it  will  not  be  out  of  place  for  a  teacher  of  a  special 


122  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

room,  as  well  as  any  other  teacher,  to  keep  close  watch 
for  the  beginnings  of  vanity  and  egotism  in  order  that  she 
may  promptly  check  them.  This  can  often  be  done  by 
comparing  the  work  of  the  child  who  needs  to  be  thus 
corrected  with  that  of  some  other  pupils  of  superior,  or 
at  least  equal,  ability  in  that  particular  line.  It  is  actu- 
ally easier  for  a  teacher  to  hold  such  tendencies  in  check 
in  a  room  where  the  pupils  are  of  about  equal  ability 
than  in  a  room  where  the  bright  children  are  conspicuous 
by  their  superiority  over  their  classmates. 

17.  Corresponding  to  the  special  adaptations  of 
method,  there  should  be  a  readjustment  of  emphasis  in 
subject  matter. 

Modification  of  methods  of  instruction  must  perforce 
bring  about  modification  in  subject  matter.*  Correspond- 
ing to  the  lessened  amount  of  drill,  there  will  be.  a  less- 
ening in  the  number  of  problems  and  exercises  in  the 
formal  subjects.  Less  attention  should  be  given  to  de- 
tails of  secondary  importance,  and  more  emphasis  placed 
upon  necessary  principles.  Much  of  the  purely  explan- 
atory matter  in  the  textbooks  may  be  passed  over  light- 
ly, or  even  entirely  omitted.  It  was  found,  in  our  exper- 
imental room,  that  the  children  often  knew  much  of 
the  matter  ahead  of  them  in  the  course  of  study,  and 
this  made  it  possible  for  that  material  to  be  passed  over 
rapidly.  Especially  did  this  happen  when  a  new  volume 
in  a  series  of  textbooks  in  the  same  subject  was  taken  up. 
For  instance,  the  advanced  textbook  in  geograplry,  which 


*Attention  may  be  called  in  this  connection  to  the  reports  of  the 
Committee  of  the  Department  of  Superintendence  on  the  Economy  of  Time 
in  Education,  published  in  the  Fourteenth  Yearbook,  Part  I,  Sixteenth 
Yearbook,  Part  I,  Seventeenth  Yearbook,  Part  I,  and  Eighteenth  Yearbook, 
Part  II,  of  the  National  Society  for  the  Study  of  Education.  These  reports 
aught  to  be  of  great  assistance  by  outlining  the  minimal  essentials  of  sub- 
jt'cl  matter  in  the  elementary  school  and  thus  reversely  by  indicating  subject 
matter  that  is  needlessly  taught  or  taught  at  the  wrong  time  or  by  wasteful 
methods. 


Adaptation  of  Methods  123 

the  Special  Sixth  began  to  study  at  about  the  middle  of 
the  year,  began  with  a  review  of  the  definitions  and 
principles  which  the  pupils  had  learned  in  their  study 
of  the  intermediate  book.  Since  it  was  found  that  the 
children  were  already  perfectly  familiar  with  practi- 
cally all  this  material,  this  portion  of  the  book  was  used 
only  for  a  rapid  review,  instead  of  being  made  the  sub- 
ject of  definite  and  extended  assignments,  as  would  have 
been  the  case  if  the  matter  had  been  entirely  new.  Ex- 
actly the  same  thing  took  place  in  fifth-grade  arithmetic 
and  sixth-grade  language. 

18.  The  teacher  of  a  special  room  for  gifted  children 
should  be  allowed  wide  latitude  in  modifying  the  course 
of  study  to  fit  the  purpose  of  the  room  and  the  needs  of 
the  pupils. 

The  investigator's  work  with  the  experimental  room 
during  the  year  has  thoroughly  convinced  him  that  a 
great  deal  of  freedom  should  be  allowed  the  teacher  of  a 
gifted  room  in  following  the  conventional  course  of 
study.  All  the  investigators  feel  that  from  the  stand- 
point of  the  experiment,  as  a  whole,  a  considerable 
amount  of  time  has  been  lost  in  doing  work  which  could 
be  justified  only  on  the  ground  of  preparation  for  the 
somewhat  rigid  requirements  of  a  conservative  school 
system.  The  fact  that  we  were  not  allowed  to  alter  the 
sequence  of  any  of  the  branches  of  subject  matter  seri- 
ously interfered  with  our  efforts  to  condense  the  regular 
course  of  study  for  the  two  years  into  an  economical  and 
efficient  one-year  course.  If  a  teacher  of  the  type  which 
has  been  recommended  is  once  secured,  she  should  be 
left  in  comparative  freedom  to  select  what  she  considers 
the  essential  parts  of  the  course  of  study,  and  to  present 
them  in  the  order  which  is  best  adapted  to  the  needs  of 


124  Classes  foe  Gifted  Children 

her  class.  The  time  saved  by  these  methods  would  af- 
ford opportunity  to  add  a  considerable  quantity  of  out- 
side material  of  a  cultural  nature,  much  of  which  might 
well  be  supplied  by  the  pupils  themselves.  This  added 
material  might  include,  among  many  others,  such  things 
as  extended  supplementary  reading  of  standard  liter- 
ature (mainly  for  appreciation),  dramatization,  pag- 
eantry, free  discussion  of  the  important  topics  in  the 
news  of  the  day,  the  collection  of  newspaper  clippings 
correlating  with  the  work  in  civics  and  hygiene,  the  illus- 
tration of  history  and  geography  with  such  relics,  cos- 
tumes, utensils,  etc.,  as  are  available  or  can  be  procured, 
especially  those  which  the  pupils  are  able  to  bring,  en- 
richment of  the  work  in  history  by  some  consideration 
of  industrial  history,  study  of  local  city  and  state  indus- 
tries in  connection  with  the  work  in  geography,  and  so 
on  through  a  long  list.  In  some  cases  it  might  be  possi- 
ble to  take  up  the  study  of  a  foreign  language,  as  was 
done  in  the  "Opportunity  Class"  at  Louisville,  where 
fourth-grade  children  were  given  daily  lessons  in  Ger- 
man, wholly  by  the  conversational  method. 

Special  rooms  for  gifted  children  are  of  two  general 
types.  One  type,  which  is  the  more  common,  contem- 
plates a  saving  of  time  by  providing  for  the  more  rapid 
progress  of  the  pupils.  The  other  makes  no  provision 
for  the  saving  of  time,  but  makes  use  of  a  course  of 
study  different  from  the  ordinary  one  in  that  it  either 
(a)  contains  more  of  the  same  kind  of  material,  or  (&) 
includes  different  material,  which  is  usually  of  a  more 
cultural  nature.  Of  the  second  type,  the  latter  arrange- 
ment is  by  far  the  better.  It  is  subject  to  one  danger, 
however,  in  that  in  the  attempt  to  add  cultural  material 
the  course  may  be  so  diluted  as  to  defeat  one  of  the  most 


Adaptation  of  Methods  125 

important  purposes  of  such  rooms,  i.  c,  the  provision  of 
opportunity  for  gifted  children  to  learn  what  hard  men- 
tal work  is.  This  danger,  however,  is  not  inherent  in 
the  scheme  and  may  very  easily  be  avoided. 

Although  most  of  the  special  rooms  for  gifted  chil- 
dren now  in  operation  have  a  course  of  study  so  arranged 
as  to  make  it  possible  for  the  pupils  to  do  three  years' 
work  in  two,  this  study  has  shown  that  bright  children 
of  the  fifth  and  sixth  grades  can  do  two  years'  work  in 
one,  and  the  same  gain  in  time  has  been  accomplished  in 
one  or  two  other  rooms  of  the  kind.  By  lessening  the 
amount  of  drill,  decreasing  the  amount  of  explanation, 
and,  on  the  side  of  subject  matter,  omitting  or  passing 
rapidly  over  what  is  already  known  or  of  relative  un- 
importance, enough  time  can  be  saved  so  that  all  of  the 
essential  topics  of  the  two  years'  work  can  be  mastered 
in  one.  There  will  be  time  enough  left,  in  addition,  to 
make  possible  the  introduction  of  a  considerable  amount 
of  cultural  material  of  the  kind  mentioned  above,  by 
which  the  course  will  be  enriched  and  made  to  connect 
more  completely  with  the  lives  of  the  individual  pupils. 


Chapter  XI 

AN  ANALYTICAL  STUDY  OF  TALENT  IN 
DRAWING 

As  explained  in  the  introduction  it  was  felt  that  the 
study  of  the  selection  and  training  of  gifted  children 
ought  to  be  supplemented  by  a  study  of  the  restricted 
sort  of  superiority  that  we  designate  as  'talent.'  For 
several  reasons  talent  in  drawing,  as  revealed  under 
school  conditions,  seemed  a  promising  field  for  such  a 
study.  Dr.  H.  T.  Manuel  devoted  his  time  during  1916- 
17  to  this  work.  His  theme  was  this :  what  are  the  psy- 
chical traits  or  psychophysical  traits  that  are  significant 
for  superior  skill  in  drawing  and  how  may  the  presence 
of  these  traits  be  best  diagnosed  by  tests  ? 

A.      GENERAL   PLAN 

The  general  method  pursued  in  the  study  was  simply 
to  discover  a  number  of  persons  (five  college  students, 
8  high-school  students  and  6  elementary-school  pupils) 
whose  work  in  drawing  was  conspicuously  good,  to  apply 
to  them  a  considerable  number  of  tests  and  also  to  gather 
information  of  a  non-experimental  character  about  their 
abilities,  interests  and  other  personal  traits.  Ideally,  we 
would  like  complete  '  psychograms, '  as  Stern  terms  them, 
of  numerous  persons  endowed  with  exceptional  talent, 
for  at  present  we  have  no  objective  method  of  determin- 
ing talent  in  embryo  or  even  of  predicting  its  develop- 
ment when  it  makes  its  initial  appearance.  It  is,  as 
Kerschensteiner  remarks  "an  uncommonly  great,  but 
also  a  very  difficult  task  of  experimental  pedagogy,  to 
find  the  key  for  the  appraisement  of  these  different 
talents. ' ' 

126 


Study  of  Talent  in  Drawing  127 

B.      PREVIOUS    STUDIES 

Like  all  pioneer  studies,  this  one  has  proceeded  slow- 
ly and  has  in  some  respects  performed  its  most  valuable 
service  by  clearing  the  way  for  further  explorations.  An 
examination  of  previous  studies  of  drawing*  shows  only 
three  studies,  those  by  Binet,  by  Kik  and  by  Kerschen- 
steiner,  that  are  related  at  all  closely  to  this  one. 

Binet t  conducted  a  rather  extensive  investigation 
of  the  talent  and  the  mental  characteristics  of  a  young 
painter  named  Tade  Styka. 

Kiki  studied  thirteen  children  who  showed  con- 
spicuous talent  in  drawing  and  arrived  at  certain  conclu- 
sions with  regard  to  the  nature  of  special  talent,  the 
types  of  ability  in  drawing,  the  influence  of  heredity  and 
the  influence  of  intelligence,  but  his  data  are  limited  to 
the  non-experimental  field. 

Kerschensteiner§  collected  thousands  of  drawings 
from  the  school  children  of  Munich,  rated  them  and 
studied  the  pupils  who  made  the  best  ones  with  respect 
to  age,  sex,  school  grade,  general  school  success,  parental 
calling,  home  training,  etc. 

C.      THE   TESTS  EMPLOYED 

Of  the  19  persons  studied  by  Dr.  Manuel,  eight  were 
selected  for  extended  laboratory  tests  (12  to  16  hours 
per  capita)  ;  six  of  these  were  students  in  the  local  high 
schools  and  two  were  students  in  the  Department  of  Art 
and  Design  of  the  University  of  Illinois.    Six  elementary 


*See,  for  instance,  F.  C.  Ayer,  The  Psychology  of  Drawing.  Balti- 
more, 1916. 

fA  Binet.  La  psychologic  artistique  de  Tade  Styka.  L'Annee 
psychologique,    15:    1908     (1909),    315-356. 

JG.  Kik.  Die  ubernormale  Zeichnenbegabung  bei  Kindern.  Zeits. 
f.  angewandte  Psychologie,  2 :    1908,  92-149. 

§Gr.  Kerschensteiner.  Die  Entwicklung  der  zeichnerischen  Begabung. 
Munich,   1905.     508  pp. 


128  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

school  pupils  who  showed  the  most  skill  in  drawing 
among  the  pupils  of  the  fifth  and  sixth  grades  were  also 
tested  rather  exhaustively  in  conjunction  with  the  exper- 
imental work  carried  on  by  Miss  Coy  with  the  group 
of  gifted  pupils. 

The  following  were  all  the  tests  employed  in  the  in- 
vestigation; not  every  subject  was  given  all  of  them. 
No  special  stress  is  placed  upon  the  classification  here 
employed. 

List  of  Tests  Used  in  Studying  Talent  in  Drawing 
I.     Tests  of  General  Intelligence 

1.  Stanford  Revision  of  Binet  with  special  reference  to 

a.  Memory  for  digits  f.  Fables 

b.  Designs  g.  Code 

c.  Sixty  words  h.  Inclosed  boxes 

d.  Clock  hands  i.  Paper  cutting 

e.  Vocabulary  j.  Logical  memory 

II.     Tests  of  Higher  Thought  Processes 

A.  Linguistic  Ability;  Linguistic  Invention 

2.  Word  building  (Whipple) 

3.  Language  scales  (Trabue) 

4.  Composition  (Winch) 

B.  Controlled  Verbal  Association 

5.  Hard  opposites 

6.  Analogies  (Whipple  A,  B,  C) 

C.  Invention  from  Graphic  Forms 

7.  Ink  blots  (Whipple) 

8.  Pictorial  imagination  (after  Rossolimo) 

D.  Understanding  and  Reasoning 

9.  Easy  and  Hard  Directions  (Woodworth  and  Wells) 

10.  Equivalent  proverbs,  I,  II,  VI. 

11.  Reasoning  (Bonser,  I  and  II) 

12.  Reasoning  (Thurstone) 


Study  of  Talent  in  Drawing  129 

E.  Mental  Manipulation  of  Spatial  Forms 

13.  Hand  test  (Thurstone) 

14.  Spatial  relations  test  (Thurstone) 

15.  Punched  holes  (Thurstone) 

16.  Painted  cube  test  (Rugg) 

F.  Esthetic  Judgment 

17.  Esthetic  appreciation  (Thorndike) 

18.  Esthetic  judgment  (Illinois) 

III.     Tests  of  Memory  and  Learning 

A.  Logical  Memory 

19.  Marble  Statue  (Whipple) 

20.  Dutch  Homestead  (Whipple) 

21.  Cicero  (Whipple) 

22.  Lincoln  and  Pig  (Whipple) 

B.  Memory  for  Visual  Forms 

23.  Recognition  of  lineal  figures  (Rossolimo) 

24.  Recognition  of  colored  figures  (Rossolimo) 

25.  Recognition  of  pictures  (Rossolimo) 

C.  Learning 

26.  Substitution  (Thurstone) 

27.  Perceptual  learning  (Manuel) 

28.  Mirror  drawing  (star  test) 

D.  Imagery 

29.  Questionary  for  visual,  auditory,  kinesthetic  (Betts) 

IV.     Tests  of  Reading 

30.  Reading  forward  (Whipple) 

31.  Reading  backward  (Whipple) 

V.     Tests  of  Perception  and  Observation 

32.  Cancellation  (Whipple,  4  forms) 

33.  Observation  test  (Rossolimo) 

34.  Description  of  stamp  (Whipple) 

35.  Spot  patterns  (McDougall) 


130  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

VI.     Tests  of  Sensory  Discrimination 

36.  Color-Blindness  (Nagel) 

37.  Visual  space  discrimination  (Manuel) 

38.  Discrimination  of  proportions  (Manuel) 

VII.     General  Physical  and  Motor  Abilities 

39.  Tapping  (as  in  Whipple's  Manual) 

40.  Steadiness  (as  in  Whipple's  Manual) 

41.  Aiming  (as  in  Whipple's  Manual) 

42.  Grip  (as  in  Whipple's  Manual) 

43.  Weight  (for  children) 

VIII.     Tests  of  Handwriting  and  Drawing 

44.  Quality  of  handwriting  (Ayres  scale) 

45.  Drawing   a   horse    (memory)    and    a    toy .  wagon 

(object) 

Most  of  these  tests  have  been  sufficiently  described  in 
the  preceding  chapters.  Of  the  remainder  those  credit- 
ed to  Whipple  will  be  found  in  the  author's  Manual  of 
Mental  and  Physical  Tests;  those  credited  to  Rossolimo 
are  described  in  Klinik  f.  psychische  u.  nervose  Krank- 
heiten,  Bd.  6:1911,  Heft  3  and  4,  also  Bd.8:  1914,  Heft 
2.  Betts'  qucstionary  is  in  his  doctor's  dissertation,  Co- 
lumbia University,  1909,  entitled  The  Distribution  and 
Functions  of  Mental  Imagery.  The  painted  cube  test  is 
described  by  H.  0.  Rugg,  The  Experimental  Determina- 
tion of  Mental  Discipline  in  School  Studies,  Baltimore, 
1916;  the  Thorndike  tests  of  esthetic  appreciation  in  the 
Jour,  of  Educ.  Psych.,  7:1916,  509-522.  Tests  18,  27, 
37,  38. 

In  attempting  to  carry  out  the  program  thus  outlined 
there  was  encountered  a  difficulty  that  proved  more  seri- 
ous than  was  apprehended — namely,  the  difficulty  of 
finding  standards  of  performance  in  the  various  tests 
with  which  to  compare  the  performance  of  persons  gifted 


Study  of  Talent  in  Drawing  131 

in  drawing.  Ideally,  the  performance  of  a  given  individ- 
ual ought  to  be  located  in  a  well-standardized  percentile 
distribution  of  persons  of  like  age  and  sex  and  of  all  de- 
grees of  talent  in  drawing.  This  ideal  comparison  could 
be  gained  with  only  a  few  of  the  tests;  in  others  Dr. 
Manuel  used  all  available  data  to  construct  what  might 
be  termed  'approximate'  percentile  distributions;  in 
others  comparison  could  be  made  only  with  the  averages 
or  medians  reported  by  other  investigators;  with  yet 
others  nothing  could  be  done  more  than  to  compare  the 
performances  of  different  persons  all  gifted  in  drawing. 
Handicapped  by  this  absence  of  suitable  standards 
of  comparison  it  was  nevertheless  possible  to  assemble 
the  results  for  each  subject  in  such  a  way  as  to  construct 
for  him  a  sort  of  'psychological  profile,'  to  borrow  the 
term  used  by  Rossolimo.  That  is,  a  table  was  drawn  up, 
and  from  it  a  graph,  to  indicate  for  each  person  in  which 
tests  he  exceeded,  in  which  he  fell  short,  the  median  per- 
formance of  his  age-group,  and  in  many  cases  to  show 
also  how  much  his  superiority  or  inferiority  amounted 
to.  These  tabular  and  graphical  representations  of  the 
psychological  traits  of  each  person  talented  in  draw- 
ing were  then  supplemented  by  a  brief  account  of  the 
personality  in  question,  in  so  far  as  facts  that  seem  to 
bear  on  the  possession  of  drawing  talent  could  be  dis- 
covered. The  following  accounts  will  serve  in  illustra- 
tion : 

"Subject  S7  is  19  years  old.  His  father  is  a  physician,  his  mother 
'an  artist,  her  father  an  architect  and  her  mother  a  natural  designer.'  His 
paternal  grandfather  is  'quite  mechanically  inclined.'  The  young  man's 
interest  in  drawing  dates  from  his  very  early  childhood,  at  about  three  or 
four  years.  His  only  training  in  drawing,  aside  from  the  regular  instruc- 
tion of  the  schools,  has  been  a  correspondence  course  which  was  only  par- 
tially completed.  This  course  was  given  up  when  he  entered  the  Academy. 
At  the  age  of  17  he  did  some  drawing  for  a  high-school  journal.  He  is 
most  interested  in  cartooning  or  illustrating  and  says  he  intends  to  become 
a  cartoonist.  Trouble  with  his  eyes  has  delayed  his  school  progress.  The 
study  of  mathematics  has  given  him   some  difficulty.     He  is   interested   in 


132  Classes  foe  Gifted  Children 

music  and  plays  a  saxophone.     The  instructor  in  art  at  the  Academy  char- 
acterizes him  as  'distinctly  of  the  artistic  type.'   " 

"Subject  "S2  is  a  high-school  junior  aged  17  years.  He  stands  about 
second  in  drawing  ability  among  the  pupils  in  the  Urbana  High  School, 
according  to  the  estimate  of  the  supervisor  of  drawing. 

"His  father  is  a  mathematician,  but  has  drawn  illustrations  for  books. 
Practically  all  his  mother's  people  are  architects;  indeed,  her  father  is  a 
professor  of  architecture.     His  only  brother  is  a  student  in  civil  engineering. 

"This  boy  was  born  in  America,  of  Swiss  parentage.  He  first  learned 
to  speak  English,  but  before  school  age,  he  began  to  speak  Swiss-German 
dialect,  and  upon  entering  school  in  Switzerland,  took  up  the  study  of 
German  in  the  first  grade.  Upon  returning  to  the  United  States  about 
five  years  ago,  he  began  to  speak  English. 

"His  first  memory  of  interest  in  drawing  goes  back  to  map  drawing 
in  the  Swiss  schools.  After  a  time  it  seemed  to  him  that  he  did  not  suc- 
ceed as  well  as  others  in  the  schools,  particularly  in  water-color  drawing, 
and  he  rather  lost  interest  in  drawing  on  that  account.  Even  now  he  does 
not  like  water-color  drawing.  He  was  still  in  the  grade  school  when  he 
returned  to  this  country  and  his  interest  in  drawing  revived  when  he 
found  that  he  could  draw  better  than  pupils  in  American  schools.  His 
training  in  drawing  consists  in  what  he  was  taught  in  the  grade  schools 
plus  one  year  in  the  high  school  which  included  both  free-hand  and  me- 
chanical work. 

"He  has  done  practical  work  in  illustrating,  some  of  which  has  ap- 
peared in  the  Denver  Post,  and  some  of  which  will  appear  in  the  high- 
school  annual.  He  likes  decorative  drawing,  but  dislikes  mechanical 
drawing.  His  training  seems  to  have  been  too  limited  as  yet  for  the  de- 
velopment of  highly  specialized  interests.  He  wants  to  become  an  artist 
and  would  like  to  go  into  pure  art.  On  the  other  hand,  for  financial  reasons 
he  may  go  into  illustrating  and  commercial  work. 

"Of  other  school  subjects  he  likes  history,  literature  (though  not  the 
kind  taught  in  school),  botany  and  zoology.  Mathematics,  foreign  lan- 
guages, physics  and  chemistry  he  dislikes.  His  average  mark  for  20 
semester  grades,   not  including  drawing,  is  82. 

"He  plays  the  piano  and  guitar,  but  does  not  sing,  is  interested  in 
outdoor  life  and  athletics,  though  he  does  not  take  part  in  school  athletics." 

In  a  final  attempt  to  summarize  the  information  re- 
vealed by  the  tests  and  by  personal  inquiry  concerning 
each  subject,  Dr.  Manuel  prepared  the  following  table. 
In  it  the  numerical  records  have  been  combined  and 
generalized  so  as  to  describe  each  subject  as  superior  (S), 
poor  '(P),  average  (A),  or  normal  (N)  in  general  in- 
telligence, linguistic  ability,  general  motor  ability,  hancl- 
\\  riling,  observation,  memory  for  visual  forms,  etc.  The 
table  is  continued  to  reveal  the  age,  the  present  school 
grade,  the  father's  occupation,  the  degree  of  originality. 
the  time  when  interest  in  drawing  appeared,  the  exis- 
tence" of  talent  in  drawing  among  relatives,  the  existence 
of  ability  in  music,  and  other  similar  facts.  It  will  be 
understood  that  the  compilation  of  this  table  was  attend- 


Study  of  Talent  in  Drawing  133 

cd  with  much  difficulty  and  that  not  all  the  generaliza- 
tions can  claim  scientific  reliability;  nevertheless,  the 
lay-out  of  the  results  in  this  fashion  serves  a  useful  pur- 
pose in  showing  to  what  extent  any  given  tendency  seems 
characteristic  of  persons  gifted  in  drawing. 

D.      SUMMARY  OF  EXPERIMENTAL  AND  PERSONAL  DATA 


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O     W    EW    Qg    o    g£    5S   g£    52    H     6      ft     Oca 


0)  *H  P 

•jy      g      So 

-°       a       a 

02        O        pJ        0        W      fe 

El  P    PA    AP  S     P  A    SA   PA  AP  A  PA     N      S     S 

E2  A      A     SP  A      S  S    SA    PA  —  PA  AS  A      N      S      S 

E3  IP      P     SA  A      P  A       S    SA  —  SA  S  A      N      S      S 

E4  S    PA     SAP  PA  A    SA    AS  —  A  SA  AP      N      A     S 

E5  A     PA      A  S      S  A    SP    PA  —  PA  P  ANAS 

E6  S      S      SP  S      S  P      A   AP  —  AP  A  A      N      P      S 

51  S  SA    SAP    AS  PA      ASP  SAPSNSAS 

52  A  P      SP     P      A  SP    SP    PS    PAA  SP        A      SP      N      A      S 

53  S  S     SAP     AS  SAS        S  S        AASNSAS 
$4  S  S      SP      P      S  A    SA    AS    SAA  SA     AS    AP      N      S      S 

55  S  S  SP      S  S  A    AS      S  SSA      S  PA  SA     N  SA  S 

56  A  A  AP      S  S  P    AS      S  SSP    SP  AS      A      N  S  S 

57  A  AS  —     —  A P(l)  —     —  —    —    —  —  — 

SS  A  A  —     —  A S(l)  —      —  —    —     —  —  — 

CI      S      S  SA      A      S  AS(4)S(6)     —    AS     S     AS     P  S     — 

C2      S?    —  SA    —     — S(5)    SSP    PA     —  S(3)   —  S      — 

C3PP  —     A      — A(5)     —       A      —      P      —  S      — 

C4      A      A  A       A      S  SA    SA    AS       A         S  P(2)   A     N  S       S 

C5      S       A  S      A      S  AP    PS    LS    SSA    SA  A(2)    A     N  SA     S 

(1)  Code  test  only. 

(2)  Pictorial  imagination  test  only. 

(3)  Thorndike  test  only. 

(4)  Rossolimo  test  only. 

(5)  Perceptual  learning  test  only. 

(6)  Code  and  Rossolimo  tests. 

(7)  Handwriting  rank  of  elementary  pupils  based  on  school  grades; 
high-school  students  and  adults  are  compared  within  group  only. 

(8)  Elementary  pupils  are  compared  within  group  only. 

(9)  Elementary  pupils:   discrimination  of  differences  only,   and  com- 
pared within  group  only. 

Key  to  symbols:      S,  superior;   A,  average;  P,  poor;  N,  normal; — no 
information. 


134 


Classes  for  Gifted  Children 


El 
E2 
E3 
E4 

E5 

E6 

SI 

S2 

S3 
S4 
S5 

S6 

S7 
S8 

CI 

C2 
G3 
C4 
C5 


a 

< 

13-10 
11-6 
13-1 
10-10 

10-9 
11-3 

19-8 

17-2 

16-9 
18-8 
17-6 

18-10 

19 

15-3 

Adult 
Adult 
Adult 
Adult 
Adult 


02  O 

6  Tailor 

6  Insurance 

6  Policeman 

5  Horticul- 
turist 

5  Blacksmith 

5  Contractor 

IV  Farmer 

III  Mathe- 

matician 

III  Physicist 

IV  Physician 
IV  Pattern- 
maker 

III  Estimator 

IV?  Physician 

I  &  II  Artist 

Coll.  4  Lawyer 

Coll.    Grad. 
Coll.   2  Decorator 

Coll.  4  Farmer 

Coll.  4  Electrical 

Engineer 


H 

Hm 


So 

OP  o 
4) 

—  >   » 
^(5m 


"E 

O 

Less 

Yes 

Yes 

Yes 

Less 
Less 

Yes  Always   drawn.    Special 

interest  sixth   grade 
Yes  Early  in  school  .  Yes 


Yes  Very  early 
Yes  Very  early 
Yes  First  day  of  school 

Yes  Age  seven 

Age  three  or  four 

Early  childhood 

No 

Yes  Early  childhood 

Yes  Early  childhood 


No 
No 


Yes 


No 

No 


Subjects 
El 


Drawing  Talent  Among  Relatives 


Music:   Plays 
or   Sings 


Father   draws  and  letters.   Brothers   and   sister   good  in 

school   drawing. 
E2  Mother  artistic.    Brother  good  in  school  drawing.     Two 

uncles  architects. 
E3  Father  was  best  drawer   in   family,   but   is   untrained. 

E4  Maternal  aunt  of  mother  very  good  in  oil  painting. 

E5  Cousin  is  draftsman. 

E6  Mother  a  former  supervisor  of  art. 

51  Sister  showed  special  aptitude  in   high  school 

52  Mother's  people  architects.     Father  illustrates.  Yes 

53  Younger  brother  and  sisters  draw   with  promise.  Yes 

54  Brother,  special  aptitude  in  school.     Maternal  uncle  and 
aunt   draw  as   "side   interest." 

55  Uncle  draws — talent  not  developed  Yes 

56  Father    without    training    but    makes    sketches.  Yes 

57  Mother  artist.  Yes 

58  Father  and  mother  artists. 

Cl  Father  draws  but  lacks  training.      Younger  half-brother 

draws    with     promise  Yes 

C2  No  artists  among  relatives 

€3  Father  and  mother  artists.  Yes 

C4  Mother  has  shown   ability.      Sister   draws   but  lacks  Yes 

training. 

C5  No  artists  among  relatives. 


Study  of  Talent  in  Drawing  1315 

Read  the  table  as  follows:  El  is  poor  in  general  in- 
telligence. In  linguistic  ability  the  results  of  the  tests 
are  contradictory:  in  one  or  more  tests  her  record  is 
poor,  and  in  one  or  more  tests  it  is  average.  (Personal 
data  are  self-explanatory.) 

E.      INFERENCES  CONCERNING  THE  PSYCHOPHYSICAL  CHAR- 
ACTERISTICS OF  PERSONS  TALENTED  IN  DRAWING 

With  the  experimental  results  before  us,  even  in  this 
partial  way,  it  is  fitting  to  see  what  generalizations  can 
be  drawn  concerning  the  mental  and  physical  make-up 
of  persons  who  possess  undoubted  talent  in  drawing. 
Most  of  the  generalizations  must  be  negative  ones,  but 
that  does  not  mean  that  they  are  not  worth  the  making : 
in  psychological  pioneering  of  this  sort  it  is  as  important 
to  determine  that  something  is  'not  so'  as  to  determine 
that  something  else  is  '  so. '  The  inferences  that  seem  per- 
missible will  be  presented,  then,  in  one-two-three  order, 
with  a  few  words  of  comment  where  necessary. 

1.  The  term  drawing  applies  to  a  very  complex  pro- 
cess, and  the  production  of  an  effective  draaving  calls 
into  operation  a  number  of  varied  and  distinguishable 
operations.  It  is  not  surprising,  then,  that  analysis*  is 
difficult.  There  are  all  sorts  of  drawing,  not  one  clean- 
cut  variety  of  endowment. 

2.  Correspondingly,  persons  talented  in  'drawing' 
exhibit  marked  individual  differences  in  their  mental  and 
physical  characteristics. 

From  these  two  conclusions  follows  naturally  a  third : 


♦Samples  of  attempts  to  analyze  the  factors  in  this  complex  activity 
may  be  seen  in  Albien  (Zeits.  f.  exp.  Padagogik,  5:1907,  133ff. ;  6:1908, 
Iff.),  in  Meumann  (Torlesungen  z.  Einfuhrung  in  die  exp.  Padagogik. 
Bd.  3;  1914,  726)  and  in  Ayer  (The  Psychology  of  Drawing.  1916,  pp. 
157  ff.). 


136  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

3.  Any  statement  of  the  'essential'  characteristics  of 
persons  talented  in  drawing  presupposes  a  statement  of 
the  particular  type  of  drawing  ability  that  is  exhibited. 

4.  A  certain  elementary  ability  in  graphic  represen- 
tation, such  as  is  required  for  success  with  elementary- 
school  drawing,  may  exist  more  or  less  independently  of 
general  mental  ability,  or  general  intelligence.  That  is, 
distinct  ability  in  elementary  graphic  representation 
may  appear  in  children  whose  general  intelligence  is 
much  below  the  average. 

5.  But  ability  (a)  to  acquire  the  advanced  technique 
into  which  conceptual  factors  enter,  or  (b)  to  create  orig- 
inal drawings  of  merit  implies  the  existence  of  a  good 
degree  of  general  intelligence. 

In  practice,  for  example,  a  pupil  of  decided  skill  in 
drawing  whose  general  intelligence  proved  mediocre 
could  hardly  be  encouraged  to  train  himself  with  the 
view  of  becoming  a  great  painter,  an  architect  or  an  ex- 
pert cartoonist,  but  he  might  do  exceedingly  well  as  a 
sign  painter  or  as  a  copier  of  decorative  patterns. 

6.  Linguistic  ability,  save  as  it  appears  indirectly  as 
one  index  of  general  mental  ability,  is  not  correlated  with 
nhilil II  in  drawing;  i.  e.,  linguistic  ability  may  or  may  not 
be  associated  with  ability  to  draw. 

7.  The  sort  of  motor  ability  present  in  drawing  is 
not  revealed  by  any  one  of  the  stock  tests  of  'motor  abil- 
ity.' Talent  for  drawing  does  not  presuppose  any  gen- 
eral, or  all-round  motor  superiority. 

The  fact  is,  of  course,  that  'general  motor  ability'  is 
itself  more  or  less  of  a  myth.  One  who  stands  high  in 
one  motor  test  may  stand  low  in  another. 

8.  Persons  who  exhibit  talent  in  drawing  show  no 


Study  of  Talent  in  Drawing  137 

uniform  tendency  to  write  well;  handwriting  and  draw- 
ing are  relatively  independent  performances* 

9.  There  is  some  evidence,  though  unsatisfactory, 
that  the  flexibility  of  motor  habit,  or  ability  to  form  new 
sensori-motor  habits,  that  is  dema?ided  in  the  mirror- 
drawing  test  may  be  exhibited  more  decidedly  in  persons 
talented  in  drawing  than  in  persons  not  talented  in 
drawing. 

Eleven  of  our  17  subjects  who  took  this  test  are 
ranked  as  'superior,'  but  unfortunately  eight  of  the 
eleven  are  girls  and  women,  and  there  appears  to  be  a 
sex  difference  in  this  test  favorable  to  their  sex. 

10.  The  ability  to  discriminate  fine  differences  in 
distances,  lengths,  curves  and  proportions,  though  seem- 
ingly one  essential  to  good  drawing,  is  not  satisfactorily 
measured  for  diagnostic  purposes  by  our  Tests  37  and  38 
(discrimination  of  differences  and  proportions). 

11.  Despite  individual  differences,  tests  of  'observa- 
tion' (Nos.  32,  33,  34,  35)  appear  to  have  some  value  for 
the  diagnosis  of  ability  in  drawing. 

The  stamp  test  (No.  34)  is  of  less  value  than  the 
others  because  of  the  introduction  of  the  linguistic  fac- 
tor in  making  the  report.  Nearly  all  the  persons  talented 
in  drawing  made  average  to  superior  records  in  the  can- 
cellation tests  (No.  32),  and  only  one  made  a  poor  score 
in  the  Rossolimo  test  (No.  33).  The  greatest  variety  of 
performance  appeared  in  the  spot-pattern  test  (No.  35). 

12.  Introspective  reports  of  possibly  questionable 
reliability  indicate  that  while  many  who  are  talented  in 
drawing  have  superior  visual  imagery,  nevertheless  good 
achievement  in  drawing  may  coexist  with  poor  visual 


*This  fact  is  commented  on  by  Freeman,  The  Psychology  of  the  Com- 
mon Branches.     1916,  p.  34. 


138  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

imagery.     The  same  tiling  may  be  said  of  kinesthetic 
imagery. 

Logically,  it  seems  as  if  capacity  to  visualize  well, 
to  command  visual  imagery,  were  a  prerequisite  to  skill 
in  drawing,  but  here  as  in  other  aspects  of  mental  life, 
the  readiness  with  which  mental  substitution,  vicarious 
mental  functioning,  may  occur  is  striking.  We  may  cite 
Binet's  statement,  in  the  course  of  his  study  of  Tade 
Styka,  the  young  painter:  "I  shall  add  also  the  conclu- 
sion that  one  may  be  an  admirable  draughtsman  with  a 
very  ordinary  visual  memory."  The  present  writer  is 
reminded  of  the  positive  declaration  made  to  him  by 
Pillsbury,  the  celebrated  blind-fold  chess  player,  that  he 
did  not  ordinarily  visualize  his  games. 

13.  Memory  for  visual  forms  is  worth  testing  (Test 
27)  for  drawing  ability,  although  certain  forms  of  draw- 
ing ability  may  coexist  with  a  low  degree  of  this  memory. 

14.  A  similar  conclusion  may  be  drawn  concerning 
ability  to  manipulate  spatial  forms  mentally  (Tests  13, 
14,  15,  16). 

A  difficulty  Unit  appears  in  the  use  of  some  of  these 
tests  ought,  however,  to  be  pointed  out.  Probably  achieve- 
ment in  the  more  difficult  of  these  tests  is  rather  directly 
conditioned  by  general  intelligence;  in  others  achieve- 
ment may  be  partly  conditioned  by  familiarity  with  the 
material,  e.  g.,  familiarity  with  geometrical  names  and 
objects.  However,  these  tests  might  still  be  useful  for 
instructional  purposes,  as  for  instance,  in  determining 
whether  a  pupil  has  the  capacity  to  concentrate  his  at- 
tention upon  the  sort  of  material  with  which  he  must 
deal. 

15.  The  two  tests  used  in  this  study  in  the  attempt 
io  measure  inventiveness  and  imagination  in  the  graphic 


Study  of  Talent  in  Drawing  139 

field  (Nos.  7  and  8;  ink-blots  and  pictorial  imagination) 
are  of  doubtful  value. 

16.  The  two  tests  of  esthetic  judgment  (Nos.  17  and 
18)  did  not  agree  with  each  other  in  their  ratings  of  our 
subjects.  Skill  in  drawing  may  coexist  with  poor  es- 
thetic taste. 

F.       A  DESIRABLE  PROGRAM  FOR  TESTING  ABILITY  IN 
DRAWING 

The  investigation  by  Dr.  Manuel  may  be  thought  of 
as  having  cleared  the  way  for  further  approach  to  the 
practical  problem — the  development  of  relatively  simple 
and  reliable  tests  diagnostic  of  drawing  talent,  analogous 
to  the  set  of  tests  recommended  for  the  diagnosis  of  su- 
perior general  intelligence. 

We  need  such  a  set  of  tests  because  it  is  not  sufficient 
to  measure  simply  the  end  product,  the  drawing.  The 
fact  that  one  child  gets  on  well  in  drawing  in  the  schools 
and  that  another  does  not,  must  not  be  taken  forthwith 
as  an  indication  of  the  comparative  drawing  talent  of 
the  two  children.  Interest  in  drawing  may  be  manifes- 
ted by  children  Math  no  inherent  manual  skill,  and  these, 
children  will  often  make  good  progress  under  school  in- 
struction, enough  to  show  an  acquired  skill  sufficient  to 
deceive  the  teacher  on  the  search  for  the  real  superiority 
of  talent. 

"Sargent  and  Miller,  in  their  How  Children  Learn 
to  Draw,  p.  235,  remark : 

"As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  representation  of  isolated  things  does  not 
furnish  an  adequate  motive  for  children  except  for  the  few  to  whom  form 
and  color  of  themselves  make  an  unusually  strong  appeal  and  awaken  a 
vivid  inner  experience.  For  these  few,  desirous  to  express  what  so  strongly 
impresses  them,  ordinary  nature  and  object  drawing  is  sufficient,  and  they 
make  excellent  progress  in  it.  These  are  children  with  so-called  'special 
talent.'  In  most  cases  this  type  of  talent  in  elementary  schools  appears 
to  consist  primarily  in  a  special  interest  and  not  in  a  special  endowment 
of  skill.     This  interest  is  related  to  skill  as  cause  to  effect.     In  other  words, 


140  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

if  we  can  induce  an  equal  interest  on  the  part  of  other  children,  they  will 
develop  equal  skill.  One  of  the  significant  facts  brought  out  in  the  course 
of  the  work  previously  described  is  that  not  infrequently  children  who 
show  under  ordinary  circumstances  no  indications  of  talent  will,  when  the 
appeal  to  their  particular  interests  is  found,  equal  or  surpass  in  skill 
those  who  appeared  at  first  to  be  gifted  artistically." 

Every  one  recognizes  this  sort  of  thing  in  the  field 
of  music;  many  persons  are  keenly  interested  in  music 
and  can  develop  good  musical  appreciation  yet  never  be- 
come artistic  musicians  or  perhaps  even  moderately  good 
amateur  performers. 

The  present  investigation  suggests  that  the  materials 
fur  feiich  a  set  of  diagnostic  tests  for  drawing  talent  may 
be  found  in  the  following  array: 

(1)  Tests  of  the  elementary  ability  to  represent,  by 
line  and  areas,  figures  and  objects  directly  observed. 

(2)  Tests  of  general  intelligence. 

(3)  Tests  of  ability  to  discriminate  differences  in 
visual  magnitudes. 

(4)  Tests  of  visual  acuity  and  normality  of  color 
vision. 

(5)  Tests  of  ability  to  observe  visually. 

(6)  Tests  of  memory  for  visual  forms,  especially 
deferred  memory. 

(7)  Tests  of  ability  mentally  to  manipulate  visual 
forms. 

(8)  Tests  of  esthetic  judgment. 

It  seems  likely,  in  the  opinion  of  Dr.  Manuel,  that 
Nos.  1,  6  and  7  might  advantageously  be  conducted  in 
the  form  of  what  might  be  termed  'instruetcd-lcarning' 
tests;  that  is,  the  test  material  might  be  presented  in 
different  sections  separated  by  specific  instructions  con- 
cerning the  best  method  of  handling  the  material.  Thus, 
in  presenting  material  for  Test  I,  the  first  trial  might 
be  uninstrueted,  the  next  might  follow  instructions  to 


Study  of  Talent  in  Drawing  141 

proceed  in  a  certain  desirable  way ;  the  next  by  another 
step  in  method  of  attack,  etc.  Such  a  test  would  bring 
most,  at  least,  of  the  examinees  to  pursue  the  same  meth- 
od and  would  bring  to  light  capacitj'  to  take  instruction 
and  to  profit  by  it  in  that  particular  activity. 

To  carry  out  this  program  the  following  needs  must 
be  met : 

(1)  Statistical  studies  of  the  frequency  of  special- 
ized ability  of  given  degrees  as  manifested  under  present 
classroom  conditions. 

(2)  A  really  workable  set  of  scales  for  measuring 
achievement  in  the  actual  production  of  drawings  under 
different  conditions  and  of  different  varieties,  e.  g.,  free- 
hand, mechanical,  excellence  of  composition,  excellence 
of  perspective,  drawing  from  the  object,  drawing  from 
memory,  etc. 

(3)  Sets  of  standardized  tests  for  measuring  the 
elementary  ability  to  reproduce  by  lines  and  areas  ""hat 
is  seen,  for  measuring  excellence  of  esthetic  judgment, 
for  measuring  memory  of  visual  forms,  and  for  measur- 
ing ability  to  handle  visual  forms  mentally  in  three- 
dimensional  space.  All  of  these  tests  should  be  framed 
in  duplicate  equivalent  series  and  applied  upon  enough 
pupils  to  determine  reasonably  accurate  percentile  distri- 
butions by  age  and  by  school  grade. 

(4)  Studies  of  persons  known  for  their  success  in 
various  art  vocations  in  order  to  determine  the  type  of 
ability  which  these  several  vocations  demand. 

(5)  Introspective  studies  by  trained  individuals  to 
discover  more  exactly  the  relation  of  imagery  to  ability 
in  drawing. 


142  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

G.      ANNOTATED  BIBLIOGRAPHY  OF  REFERENCES  CONSULTED 
IN   THIS   STUDY  OF   TALENT   IN  DRAWING 

Albien,  G.  Der  Anteil  der  nachkonstruierenden  Tatig- 
keit  des  Auges  und  der  Apperception  an  dem  Behal- 
te.n  und  der  Wiedergabe  einfacher  Formen.  Zeit- 
schrift  fur  Experiment  die  Pddagogik,  Bd.  5:  1907, 
133ff;  Bd.  6:  1908,  Iff. 

Albien's  experiment  represents  an  elaborate  attempt  to  isolate  ex- 
perimentally the  various  parts  of  the  drawing  process.  Simple  figures 
of  varying  difficulty  were  used  for  copy.  Three  methods  of  exposure 
were  used.  The  first  was  an  exposure  for  ten  seconds  by  means  of 
the  tachistoscope,  during  which  period  the  eyes  remained  fixed  upon 
the  same  point.  In  the  second  method,  the  subject  was  permitted  to 
view  the  copy  until  he  thought  that  he  could  reproduce  it;  then  he 
attempted  to  draw  it  from  memory.  In  the  third  method,  the  figure 
was  drawn  with  the  copy  in  view.  The  subjects  in  the  experiments 
were  forty-five  pupils,  ages  9  to  18,  from  the  Realschule.  These  in- 
cluded children  of  good,  average,  and  poor  ability  in  drawing  and 
of  good  and  poor  intelligence.  All  except  nine  pupils  had  had  instruc- 
tion in  free-hand  drawing. 

Aver.  F.  C.  The  Psychology  of  Drawing  with  Special 
Reference  to  Laboratory  Teaching.  Baltimore,  1916. 
Pp.  18G. 

Contains  comprehensive  summary  of  the  literature  of  drawing.  Re- 
ports also  an  experimental  study  of  drawing  with  special  reference  to 
laboratory  procedure.  (1)  Four  groups  of  subjects  were  tested  with 
unfamiliar  objects  as  to  their  abilities  in  drawing,  description,  and 
diagramming.  Correlations  were  made  between  the  orders  of  merit 
of  these  productions.  The  groups  were  (a)  51  high  school  students, 
(b)  48  graduate  students,  (c)  50  college  students,  and  (c)  61  college 
students.  Three  of  the  groups  were  examined  as  to  their  memory  of 
details  after  they  had  drawn  and  described  various  objects.  The  sec- 
ond group  made  introspective  analyses  of  the  processes  involved,  after 
drawing  and  describing  an  object.  (2)  Grades  of  51  high  school  stu- 
dents were  compared  with  their  ranking  in  drawing  as  discovered  in 
the  special  tests.  (3)  Grades  in  drawing  received  by  141  normal  school 
students  were  compared  with  the  grades  received  in  all  other  subjects. 
(4)  16  students  were  given  an  experimental  test  in  the  effect  of  analy- 
tical seeing  upon  drawing. 

Betts,  George  H.  The  Distribution  and  Functions  of 
Mental  Imagery.  (Doctor's  dissertation,  Columbia 
University,  1909.) 

Contains  the  questionary  which  was  used  for  the  study  of  imagery 
in  this  investigation. 

Binet,  A.  La  psychologic  artistique  de  Tade  Styka. 
l.'Annce  psychologique,  15:  1908  (1909),  315-356. 

Report  of  a  study  of  a  young  painter,  Tade  Styka. 


Study  of  Talent  in  Drawing  143 

Bonser,  F.  G.  The  Reasoning  Ability  of  Children  of  the 
Fourth,  Fifth,  and  Sixth  Grades.  New  York,  Teach- 
ers College,  1910.    Pp.  133. 

Reports  an  attempt  to  measure  by  means  of  tests  the  reasoning 
abilities  of  children.  Factors  measured  were  mathematical  judgment, 
controlled   association,    selective  judgment,    and   literary   interpretation. 

Calfee,  Marguerite.  College  freshmen  and  four  general 
intelligence  tests.  J.  of  Educ.  Psych.  4 :  1913,  223- 
231. 

Four  general  intelligence  tests  (card  sorting,  card  dealing,  alpha- 
bet sorting,  and  mirror  drawing)  were  applied  to  103  college  fresh- 
men. Correlations  were  made  between  the  results  of  the  different  tests 
and  between  the  results  of  each  test  and  the  scholastic  standing  of  the 
students. 

Claparede,  Ed.  Profils  psychologiques  gradues  d'apres 
1 'ordination  des  sujets  avec  quelques  mots  sur  l'uti- 
lite  des  profils  en  psychologie  legale.  Archives  de 
Psych.,  16:1916,  No.  61,  70-81. 

Contains  illustrations  of  methods  of  graphing  the  performances 
of  an  individual  in  different  tests  so  that  both  the  score  and  the  relative 
standing  are  indicated. 

Cubberley,  E.  P.  Editor's  Introduction  to  Freeman's 
Experimental  Education. 

Introductory   discussion  of  experimental  education. 

Dallenbach,  K.  M.  The  effect  of  practise  upon  visual 
apprehension  in  school  children.  J.  of  Educ.  Psych., 
5 :  1914,  321-334,  387-404. 

Supplements  the  work  of  Whipple  and  Foster  (see  respective 
titles).     The  subjects  were  school  children. 

Foster,  W.  S.  The  effect  of  practice  upon  visualizing 
and  upon  the  reproduction  of  visual  impressions.  J. 
of  Educ.  Psych.,  2:  1911,  11-22. 

The  material  of  the  experiment  consisted  of  objects,  pictures  and 
nonsense  drawings.  The  time  of  exposure  was  from  10  to  60  seconds. 
The  drawing  was  sometimes  accompanied  by  written  description.  The 
subjects  were  three  adults. 

Freeman,  F.  N.  Experimental  Education.  Boston, 
1916.    Pp.  220. 

A  laboratory  manual  of  experiments  and  typical  results  in  exper- 
imental education.  Contains  introduction  by  E.  P.  Cubberley,  to  which 
reference  is  made  in  this  study. 


144  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

Freeman,  F.  N.  The  Psychology  of  the  Common 
Branches.    Boston,  1916.    Pp.  275. 

A  textbook  in  educational  psychology  as  applied  to  the  common 
branches.      Contains  a  chapter   on  drawing. 

Healey,  W.  H.,  and  Fernald,  Grace  M.  Tests  for  prac- 
tical mental  classification.  Psych.  Rev.  Monog.,  13: 
1911,  No.  2. 

Describes  a  number  of  tests  used  by  the  authors  in  the  Chicago 
Juvenile  Psychopathic  Institute. 

Ivanof,  E.  Le  dessin  des  ecoliers  de  la  Suisse  romande. 
Archives  de  Psych.,  8 :1908,  97ff. 

The  author  examined  critically  9,764  drawings  collected  from 
2,441  pupils  in  the  Swiss  schools  in  an  investigation  planned  by 
Claparede  and  Guex.  Each  child  drew  (1)  from  a  copy  a  chair  or 
stool,  (2)  from  memory  a  cat,  (3)  to  illustrate  the  fable  of  Le  Corbeau 
et  le  Renard,  and  (4)  from  choice  any  object.  The  drawings  were 
accompanied  by  information  as  to  the  age,  sex,  nationality,  rank  in 
general  work,  subjects  for  which  the  most  and  least  aptitudes  were 
shown,  ■  etc.  The  drawings  were  evaluated  according  to  three  stand- 
ards: correctness  of  proportions  of  the  drawings,  imaginative  concep- 
tion of  the  drawer,  and  the  technical  and  artistic  value  of  the  drawing. 
Various  correlations  between  aptitude  in  drawing  and  other  aptitudes 
were  made.  The  correlations  were  made  according  to  age  rather  than 
school  grade. 

Judd,  C.  H.,  and  Cowling,  D.  J.  Studies  in  perceptual 
development.  Psychological  Review  Monographs,  8 : 
1907,  349-369. 

An  experimental  study  of  the  way  in  which  the  perception  of 
simple  visual  forms  is  developed.  A  simple  figure  composed  of  straight 
and  carved  lines  was  exposed  for  ten  seconds  and  the  subjects  imme- 
diately afterward  attempted  to  reproduce  it.  The  figure  was  exposed 
repeatedly  until  the  subject  was  able  to  reproduce  its  essential  form. 

Kerschensteiner,  Georg.  Die  Entwicklung  der  zeichner- 
ischen  Begabung.    Munich,  1905#.    S.  508. 

A  comprehensive  study  of  children's  drawings.  Many  facsimile 
reproductions  are  given  of  drawings  illustrating  stages  of  development. 

Kik,  C.  Die  ubcrnormale  Zeichnenbegabung  bei  Kind- 
em.    Zeits.  fur  ang.  Psych.,  2 :  1908,  92-149. 

A  study  of  13  children  talented  in  drawing. 

Meumann,  E.  Vorlesungen  zur  Einfiihrung  in  die  ex- 
pcrimentelle  Pddagogik,  2te  Aufl ;  Bd.  3.  Leipsig, 
1914. 

Brings  together  a  vast  amount  of  material  in  the  field  of  exper- 
imental education.      Contains  an  elaborate  analysis  of  drawing. 


Study  of  Talent  in  Drawing  145 

Prosser,  C.  A.  Art  training  for  industry.  Bulletin  of 
tlie  Western  Drawing  and  Manual  Training  Associa- 
tion, Annual  Report  for  1916,  1 :  No.  2,  22-31. 

An  interesting  discussion  of  problems  in  art  training  from  the 
point  of  view  of  a  practical  worker  in  art  education. 

Pyle,  W.  H.  A  manual  for  the  mental  and  physical  ex- 
amination of  school  children.  The  University  of  Mis- 
souri Bulletin,  Vol.  17:  1916,  No.  24. 

Describes  a  number  of  tests  and  gives  norms  of  comparative  re- 
sults. 

Robinson,  J.  B.  Architectural  Composition,  New  York, 
1908;  Second  Edition  (!).    Pp.  234. 

A  formulation  of  principles  of  architecture.     Illustrated. 

Rossolimo,  G.  Die  psychologisehe  Profile.  Zur  methodik 
der  quantitative]!  Untersuchung  der  psychischen 
Vorgange  in  normalen  und  pathologischen  Fallen. 
Klinik  fur  psychische  und  nervose  Krankheiten,  Bd. 
6 :1911,  Heft  3.  See  also  the  same  title  in  Heft  4  and 
the  following  article : 

Rossolimo,  G.  Berichtigungen  und  Erganzungen  zur 
Methodik  der  Untersuchung  der  psychologischen  Pro- 
file. Klinik  fiir  psychische  and  nervose  Krankheiten, 
Bd.  8 :  1914,  Heft  2. 

In  these  references  the  author  describes  a  method  of  testing  a 
number  of  mental  processes.  Ten  tasks  are  given  in  each  test.  The 
psychological  profile  is  a  graph  which  represents  the  number  of  tasks 
correctly  done  in  each  test,  or  the  mean  number  done  in  each  group 
of   related   tests. 

Rugg,  H.  0.  The  Experimental  Determination  of  Men- 
tal Discipline  in  School  Studies.  (Descriptive  Ge- 
ometry and  Mental  Discipline).  Thesis,  University 
of  Illinois.    Baltimore,  1916.    Pp.  132. 

Summarizes  the  experimental  literature  of  mental  discipline,  and 
reports  an  experimental  study  conducted  by  the  author.  Of  interest  in 
the  study  of  drawing  because  of  the  use  made  of  tests  requiring  mental 
manipulation  of  visual  forms. 

Sargent,  W.,  and  Miller,  Elizabeth.  How  Children  Learn 
to  Draw.  Boston,  1916.    Pp.  264. 

An  account  in  detail  of  methods  of  teaching  children  to  draw. 


146  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

Stern,  W.  Die  differ entielle  Psyclwlogie  in  ihren  me- 
thodiscken  Grundlagen.    Leipsig,  1911.    S.  503. 

A  valuable  discussion  of  differential  psychology  as  a  new  scien- 
tific discipline.  Methods  of  acquiring  materials,  investigating  indi- 
vidual differences,  and  studying  individualities  are  discussed  at  length. 
The  bibliography  contains  upwards  of  1,500  titles. 

Stern,  W.  The  supernormal  child.  Journal  of  Educa- 
tional Psychology,  2 :  1911,  143-148,  181-190. 

Discusses  the  child  of  superior  ability.  Author  urges  that  some- 
thing be  done  for  the  gifted  child,  and  discusses  the  practical  and 
theoretical  problems  of  the  treatment  of  superior  endowment. 

Terman,  L.  M.  The  Measurement  of  Intelligence.  Bos- 
ton, 1916.    Pp.  362. 

"An  explanation  of,  and  a  complete  guide  for  the  use  of  the 
Stanford  revision  and  extension  of  the  Binet-Simon  intelligence  scale." 
Contains  bibliography. 

Thorndike,  E.  L.  Tests  of  esthetic  appreciation.  Jour- 
nal of  Educational  Psychology,  7 :  1916,  509-522. 

Describes  tests  for  appreciation  of  graphic  forms  and  of  poetry. 

Titchener,  E.  B.  A  Beginner's  Psychology.  New  York, 
1915.    Pp.  362. 

A  textbook  in  elementary  psychology. 

Trabue,  M.  R.  Completion  tests  for  public  school  use. 
Fifteenth  Yearbook  of  the  National  Society  for  the 
Study  of  Education,  1916,  pp.  52-59. 

Discusses  the  Trabue  language  tests  particularly  from  the  point 
of  view  of  their  use  in  public  schools. 

Trabue,  M.  R.  Completion  Test  Language  Scales.  (Doc- 
tor's dissertation,  Columbia  University),  1916. 

Describes  the  derivation,  methods  of  scoring,  etc.,  of  the  Trabue 
language  scales.      Contains  copies   of  the  scales. 

Weidensall,  Jean.  The  mentality  of  the  criminal  woman. 
Educ.  Psych.  Monog.,  No.  14,  1916. 

A  study  of  criminal  women  in  the  Bedford  Hills,  New  York,  Re- 
formatory. Contains  comparative  data  from  tests  of  college  girls  and 
maids. 

Whipple,  G.  M.     The  effect  of  practice  upon  the  range 


Study  of  Talent  in  Drawing  147 

of  visual  attention  and  of  visual  apprehension.  J.  of 
Educ.  Psych.,  1 :  1910,  250-262. 

In  experimenting  upon  the  range  of  attention,  tachistoscopic  ex- 
posure was  made  of  5,  6,  and  7-place  series  of  isolated  letters.  In  ex- 
periments with  the  range  of  apprehension,  dots,  pictures,  drawings, 
nonsense  syllables,  poetry,  and  objects  were  used.  The  subjects  were 
adults. 

Whipple,  G.  M.  Manual  of  Mental  and  Physical  Tests. 
Baltimore,  Second  Edition,  Vol.  1,  1914,  Vol.  2,  1915. 
Pp.  365  and  336. 

An  encyclopedia  of  information  on  mental  and  physical  tests.  Con- 
tains descriptions  of  many  tests  and  extensive  bibliographies.  Volume 
1  includes  a  discussion  of  the  statistical  treatment  of  numerical  results. 

Woodworth,  R.  S.,  and  Wells,  F.  L.  Association  tests. 
Psijcli.  Rev.  Monog.,  13 :  1911,  No.  5. 

Report  of  a  study  in  the  standardization  of  a  number  of  associa- 
tion tests.     Tests  are  described  and  critically  discussed. 


Chapter  XII 

PARTIAL  BIBLIOGRAPHY  ON  GIFTED  CHIL- 
DREN AND  THEIR  EDUCATION 

The  bibliography  is  partial  because  limited  to  the 
references  that  have  been  useful  to  the  compiler,  but  it  is 
at  the  same  time  representative  in  that  it  contains  enough 
references  to  each  phase  of  the  problem  (like  mathema- 
tical prodigies,  boyhood  of  great  men,  plans  of  school 
organization,  methods  of  educating  notable  children, 
etc.)  to  provide  for  the  reader  a  helpful  entrance  to  the 
literature. 

Adler,  Martha.  Mental  tests  used  as  a  basis  for  the  classification  of  school 
children.     J.  Educ.  Psych.,  5:1914,  22-28. 

Alderman,  L.  R.  Effort  to  make  the  school  fit  the  needs  of  the  excep- 
tional child.     Proc.  N.  E.  A.,  1914,  830-835. 

AJey,  J.  A.  Care  of  exceptional  children  in  the  grades.  Proc.  N.  E.  A., 
1910,   881-886. 

Becht,  A.  A.     Bright  pupils  and  dull  pupils.     J.  Educ,  79:1914,  395-6. 

Berkhan,  O.  Otto  Pohler,  das  friihlesende  Braunschweiger  Kind.  Zeits.  f. 
Einderforschung,    15:1910,    166-171. 

Berkhan,  O.  Das  Wunderkind,  Christian  H.  Heineken.  Zeits,  f.  Einder- 
forschung, 15:1910,   225-229. 

Berle,  A.  A.      Teaching  in  the  Home.     New  York,  1915.     354  pp. 

Berry,  C.  S.  Special  Classes  in  Michigan  for  Mentally  Exceptional  Chil- 
dren, in  Rept.  Supt.  Public  Instruction,  Michigan,  1914-15,  especially 
57-75. 

Bliss,  D.  C  The  application  of  standard  measurements  to  school  administra- 
tion. Fifteenth  Yearbook  of  the  National  Society  for  the  Study  of  Edu- 
cation, Part  I,   1916,    69-78. 

Boggs,  Anita  U.  A  plea  for  the  forward  child.  The  Child,  2:  Oct.  1911, 
45-47. 

Breitweiser,  J.  V.  The  case  for  the  gifted  child.  Colorado  School  Journal, 
28:   April,    1913,   20-22. 

Bruce,  H.  A.     Psychology  and  Parenthood.     N.  Y.  1915. 

Bruce,  H.  A.     Bending  the  twig.     Amer.  Mag.,  69:1910,  690-695. 

Bruce,  H.  .\.  New  idoas  in  child  training.  Amer.  Mag.,  72  :.Tuly,  1911, 
286-294. 

Bruce,  H.  A.      Lightning  calculators.     McClure's  Mag.,  39:   1912,  586-596. 

Bruce,   H.  A.      Story  of   Karl   Witte.      Outlook,   100:1912,   211-218. 

Burk,  Caroline  F.  Promotion  of  bright  and  slow  children.  Educ.  Rev.,  19: 
1900,    296-302. 

Burnell,  Elizabeth  P.  Instruction  in  mathematics  for  gifted  pupils.  Ped. 
Sem.,  24:1917,   569-583. 

Coy,  Genevieve.  The  mentality  of  a  gifted  child.  J.  Applied  Psych.,  2: 
1918,   299-307. 

Christenson,  D.  H.  Changes  in  the  course  of  study  and  school  organiza- 
tion to  meet  the  varying  capacities  of  children.  Proc.  N.  E.  A.,  1912, 
355-368. 

Cleveland,  Elizabeth.  Report  of  Director  of  the  Special  Advanced  Class  in 
Education  in  Detroit,   1916,  p.  94. 

Clerk,  F.  E.  The  Arlington  plan  of  grouping  pupils  according  to  ability 
in  the  Arlington  High  School.     Sch.  Rev.,  25:1917,   26-47. 

148 


Bibliography  on  Gifted  Children  149 

Collicott,  J.  G.  The  bright  pupil.  Proc.  N.  E.  A.  1915,  457-462.  (Dis- 
cussion,  462-466.) 

Conolly,  Margaret.  A  talk  with  the  brightest  girl  in  America.  The  New 
Success  (Harden's  May.)      Jan.,  1918,  20-22. 

-  Davidson,  H.  A.     The  gift  of  genius.     J.  of  Fed.,  16:1904,  281-297. 
Dolbear,   Katherine.      Precocious   children.     Ped.  Hem.,  19:1912,   461-491. 
Dooley,    Lucile.      Psychoanalytic  studies  of   genius.     Amer.  J.  Psych.,  Vol. 

27:1916,   363-416. 
Dorr,  Rheta.     The  child  that  is  different.     Century,  83:1912,  924-930. 
r-    Downes,  F.   E.      Seven  years  with  unusually  gifted  pupils.      Psych.   Clinic, 

6:1912,   13-17. 
Dutton,  C.  F.     Management  of  precocious  children.     Cleveland  Medical  May., 

13:1898,    143-151. 
Eike,   P.  V.     The  most  learned  boy  in  the  world.     Amer.  Mag.,   81:March, 

1916,    52. 
Ellis,  H.  A.      A  study  of  British  Genius.     1904.      300  pp. 
Ernst,   Lucy  H.      Das  jugendliche  Genie.      Time  Congress  Intern,  de  Psy- 

chologie,   1910,   674-684. 
Fleischman,  F.     A  boy  prodigy  and  the  fourth  dimension.     Harpers  Weekly, 

104,  Jan.   15,   1910,  9. 
Galton,  F.     Hereditary  Genius,  London,   1914.     368  pp. 
Galton,  F.     English  Men  of  Science.     London,  1874.     266  pp. 
Garrison,   C.   G. ;    Burke,   Agnes;    and   Hollingworth,    L.    S.      Psychology  of 

a  prodigious  child.     J.  Applied  Psych.,  1:1917,  101-110. 
Gillette,   J.   M.     The  conservation   of   talent  through   utilization.      Scientific 

Monthly,   1:1915,    151-164. 
"-»  Gist,   A.   S.     The  acceleration  of  pupils.     Sch.   and  Soc,  5: Jan.  27,    1917, 

116-118. 
Goddard,  H.  H.    Two  thousand  normal  children  measured  by  the  Binet  meas- 
uring scale  of  intelligence.     Ped.  Sem.,  18:1911,  232-259. 
Gregory,   C.      Holding  pupils  in  school.     Atlantic  Educ.  J.  2:  April,   1916, 

also  in  New  Jersey  Educ.  Bull.  Dec,  1915,  Part  II. 
Groszmann,   M.  P.  E.      The  exceptionally  bright   child.     Proc.  Nat.  Assoc. 

Study  and  Educ.  Exceptional  Children.     April,   1910,   103-133. 
Groszmann,  M.  P.  E.      Care  of  exceptionally  bright   children.     Educational 

Foundations,   26  .-June,    1915,   587-592.      (Also  Med.  Rev.   of  Reviews, 

21:1915,  212-214,  and  Scientific  Amer.  Sup.,  80:Sep.  11,  1915,  171.) 
Groszmann,  M.  P.  E.  The  Exceptional  Child,  New  York,  1917.  Pp.  764. 
Guthrie,   L.  G.      Contributions  from  history  and  literature  to  the   study  of 

precocious  children.      Lancet,   173:1907,    1592-6. 
Hardesty,  Annie  H.      Teaching  my  boys  at  home.     The  Ladies  World,  Jan. 

1916,  12. 
Harley,   H.  L.      Physical   status  of  the  special   class  for  bright   children  at 

the  University  of  Pennsylvania  summer  session,   1912.     Psych.   Clinic, 

7:March,   1913,   20-23. 
Hill,  D.  S.     Notes  on  the  problems  of  extreme  individual  differences  in  chil- 

'  dren  of  the  public  schools.     New  Orleans,  1913,  especially  pp.  67-72. 
Hirsch,  W.      Genius  and  Degeneration.     N.  Y.,   1896,  330  pp. 

—  Holmes,  W.  H.     Plans  for  classification  in  the  public  schools.     Ped.  Sem., 

18:1911,  475-502, 

Holmes,  W.  H.  Promotion  classes  for  gifted  pupils.  J.  of  Educ,  75:1912, 
376-379. 

Holmes,  W.  H.  School  Organization  and  the  Individual  Child.  Worcester, 
Mass.,  1912,  211  pp. 

Harrisburg,  Pa.   School  Committee,  Annual  Report,   1912. 

Jones,  E.  E.  Suggestions  from  cases  of  unusually  rapid  or  irregular  prog- 
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Kerschensteiner,  G.  M.  A.  Die  Entwickelvng  der  zeichnerischen  Begabung. 
Munich,  1905,  508  pp.  . 

Kiernan  J  J.  Is  genius  a  sport,  a  neurosis  or  a  child  potentially  devel- 
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150  Classes  for  Gifted  Children 

Kik,  C.      Die  ubernormale  Zeichnenbegabung  bei  Kindern.     Zeits.  f.  ange- 

wandte  Psych..    2:1908,  92-149. 
Kolbe,    P.    R.      Problem    of   the    competent.      Sch.    and    Soc,    3:March   11, 

1916,    378-380. 
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Lindley,  E.  H.  and  Bryan,  W.  L.      An  arithmetical  prodigy.     Psych.  Rev., 

7:1900,   135. 
Louisville,  Ky.,  School  Committee,  Annual  Report,   1915-18. 
Lynch,  Ella  J.      The  bright  child.     Psych.  Clinic,  4:1910,  141-144. 
Maennel,  B.     The  Auxiliary  Schools  of  Germany.      (Eng.  trans.  Bull.  U.  S. 

Bureau  Educ,    1907,   No.   3)    119   pp. 
McDonald,  R.  A.  F.     Adjustment  of  School  Organization  to  Various  Popu- 
lation  Groups.      (Teachers  Coll.   Contrib.  to  Educ.  No.   75,    1915.   145 

pp.)   especially  Ch.  xi. 
Macmillan,  D.   P.     The  discovery  and  training  of  exceptionally  bright  chil- 
dren, pp.  203-212  in  The  Child  in  the  City,  1912. 
Mill,  J.   S.      Autobiography.      London,   1873.     313  pp. 

Millard,   B.      Precocity  and  genius.     Bookman,   42:Nov.,    1915,   340-345. 
Miller,   C.   A.     The  study  of   exceptional   children.      Proc.   N.   E.   A.    1908, 

957-963,    especially    958-9. 
Miller,  Gk  A.     Mathematical  prodigies.     Science,  26:   Nov.  8,  1907,  p.  628 
Mitchell,    F.    D.      Mathematical   prodigies.      Amer.    J.   Psych.,   18:1907,    61 

143. 
Morrison,  J.  C.      The  supervisor's  use  of  standard  tests  of  efficiency.    Elem 

Sch.  J.,  January,   1917. 
Mulrey,  Cora   L.      The  rapid  advancement  class.     Educ.   Adm.  and  Superv 

3:1917,   416-419. 
Myers,    G.   C.      Broadening   the   course  of   study   for  the  brighter   children 

Educ.  Adm.  and  Superv.     Jan.  1917,  33-37. 
Olerich,  H.      The  cleverest   child  in  the  world.     Strand  Mag.,  20:1900,   130 

130.      (Review   in  Ped.  Sem.,   7:1900,   455.) 
Olerich,   H.      Das   wunderliche  Viola   Rosalia   Olerich.      Kbrperliche  Erzieh 

ung,  9:1913,  323-329. 
O'Shea,    M.    V.      Popular   misconceptions   concerning   precocity   in   children 

Sri.  nee,  34:1911,  666-674. 
O'Shea,  M.  V.   What  Mrs.  Stoner  did  for  her  child.     McClure's  Mag.,  45 

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School  No.  52.     Atlantic  Educ.  J.,  12:1917,  234-238. 
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Arbeiten  des  Bund  f.  Schulreform,   Nr.   5,    68-74. 
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i  Reprint  from  Xeue  Jahrbiicher  f.  Padagogik,  14:1904,  425-456). 
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Neue  Jahrbiicher  f.  Pad.,  28:1911,  1-24. 
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Intern,  de  Psychologic      Paris.    1901,  93-99. 
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Shaer,    I.      Special    classes    for   bright    children    in    an    English    elementarv 

school.     /.  Educ.  Psych.,  4:1918,  209-222. 
Sidis,  B.     Philistine  and  Genius.     New  York,  1911.     105  pp. 
Stern.   W.      The  supernormal   child.     ■>■   Educ.  Psych.,  2:1911,   143-148  and 

181-190. 


Bibliography  ox  Gifted  Children  151 

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July,    1915.      (See   also   Aug.,    Sept.   and   Oct.    numbers.) 
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